
Class / / , U fa 3 3 1 



Book. 



.B 






Copyriglrtl^^. 



CDE««GHT DEPOSm 



CHRISTIANITY AND THE 
LABOR MOVEMENT 



BY 

WILLIAM MONROE BALCH 

Formerly Secretary of the Methodist Federation 
for Social Service 




BOSTON 

SHERMAN, FRENCH & COMPANY 

19ia 



to*^ 



■<^ .1=-"'' 



copyeight, 1912 
Sherman, French & Company 



tCI.A320292 



TO THE MEMORY OF 

THE REVEREND MANNING BROWN BALCH 
MY FATHER 



FOREWORD 

The labor problem may be considered with 
regard to conditions or theories or duties. The 
relation of Christianity to the labor movement 
is essentially ethical and is here discussed chiefly 
in that aspect. Hence conditions and theories 
affecting the labor problem are not treated ex- 
haustively, but only in those essentials in which 
the conditions create and the theories may ex- 
plain the duties in view. To enforce the ur- 
gent social mission of the Church, to indicate 
the critical duties thrust upon us by the labor 
problem, to mark some paths toward timely so- 
cial service, are the purposes of the present 
study of Christianity and the Labor Movement. 

Considerable portions of this volume formerly 
appeared in a series of articles contributed to 
"Methodist Men" by the present writer and are 
published in the following chapters by courtesy 
of the editor of that periodical. 



CONTENTS 

CHAPTER PAGE 

I Perspective and Proportions . . 1 
II The Estrangement of the Church 

AND the Wage-Earners ... 9 

III Labor's Complaint Against the 

Church 18 

IV Labor's Complaint Against the 

Social Order 28 

V The Cheapness of Human Life 42 
VI What Church-Men Should Know- 
about Labor Unions .... 53 
VI What Wage-Earners Should 

Know about the Church . . 70 
VIII The Social Creed of the Church 80 

IX Socialism 91 

X What Christian Men Should Do 100 



PERSPECTIVE AND PROPORTIONS 

Organized religion and organized labor are 
chief dynamic factors in the progress of modern 
society. Organized capital is also a great so- 
cial factor but is conservative rather than pro- 
gressive. No menace to the future can be so 
serious as a lasting estrangement between the 
labor movement and Christianity. No emer- 
gency could be more critical than the present 
and pressing necessity of a better understand- 
ing! ^^^ ^ more cordial cooperation between the 
Church and the labor unions. 

It is primarily important for the modern 
Christian man to see the labor movement in its 
true proportions and perspective. Those who 
think of it as a "modern inconvenience," or a 
sort of cutaneous eruption on the surface of the 
social body, have all but missed the meaning of 
past history and present times. What, then, 
is the labor movement? 

Richard T. Ely says, "The labor movement, 
then, in its broadest terms, is the effort of men 
to live the lives of men. . . . The end and 
purpose of it all is a richer existence for the 



2 PERSPECTIVE AND PROPORTIONS 

toilers, and that with respect to mind, soul, and 
body." 1 

Dean Hodges says, "It is a product partly 
of the discontent which is at the heart of prog- 
ress, and partly of the fraternal spirit which is 
of the essence of the Christian religion." ^ 

Charles P> Neill, United States Commissioner 
of Labor, says that the labor movement is "the 
systematic organization of crafts or of indus- 
tries to secure control of the amount of wages 
they will receive, the hours they will work, and 
the conditions under which they will perform 
their labor." ^ 

The foregoing definitions may be summarized 
by saying that the labor movement is the in- 
dustrial aspect of democracy ; that is, indus- 
try of the people, for the people, and by the 
people. And Christianity is the religious in- 
terpretation of democracy; that is, religion of 
the people, for the people, and by the people. 
Thus Christianity and the labor movement are 
in vital affinity, and "what God hath joined to- 
gether, let no man put asunder." 

What are the facts that warrant so large an 
estimate of the labor movement ? 

First, human history itself. In the words 

1 Quoted in *'The Social Application of Religion," pp. 
64-65. 

2 "Faith and Social Service," p. 144. 

3 See "The Social Application of Religion," p. 63. 



PERSPECTIVE AND PROPORTIONS 3 

of Commissioner Neill, "The most of us realize 
that this labor movement is a world-wide move- 
ment, but we do not realize that it is a world- 
old one. Yet this is the keynote to the whole 
subject, and until we do understand this, we 
cannot correctly gauge any other aspect of it." * 
"The economic interpretation of history," a 
working principle of all scientific historians, 
implies as one of its essentials, that the facts of 
history are at no point intelligible save with 
reference to the struggles of the laboring 
classes to raise their standards of living. 

It is a modern reading, but not altogether a 
misreading, of the old story of the Exodus 
which characterizes it as a strike preceded by 
a demand on the part of a walking delegate for 
a living wage and a recognition of the union. 
It has been discussed somewhat in this view by 
at least two accredited authorities. 

The history of Rome is essentially that of the 
economic struggle of the masses against the 
classes and the decline of classic civilization is 
essentially a story of the labor movement mov- 
ing the wrong way. ^ 

Through the middle ages there were no more 
momentous movements than the abolition of 
slavery and serfdom; the peasant revolts, such 

4 "The Social Application of Religion," p. 66. 

5 Cf. Mommsen: "History of Rome," Vol. 3, pp. 304- 
305, 



4 PERSPECTIVE AND PROPORTIONS 

as those of Tyler and Cade in England, of the 
Jacquerie in Prance, of the Anabaptists in 
Germany ; and the rise and power of trade- 
guilds in the cities of all Europe. Upon these 
facts and forces, all of them obvioQsly phases 
of the continuous and underlying labor move- 
ment, depended the rise and fall of feudalism, 
and then of absolute monarchy, together with 
the possibilities of the religious reformation. 

Since the French Revolution the general es- 
tablishment of popular governments in the civi- 
lized world has been based upon the political, 
social, and economic enfranchisement of the 
working classes. In Great Britain, the Fac- 
tory Acts prohibiting the exploitation of labor ; 
the repeal of the Conspiracy Laws which had 
hitherto made illegal the organization of labor ; 
the Compensation Acts, relieving labor of the 
fearful cost in life and limb incident to modern 
industry ; the great social equities of the 
Lloyd-George Budget followed closely by state- 
insurance of the working classes against old 
age, sickness and unemployment, and the estab- 
lishment of minimum wage boards, — ^these are 
simply the statutory way-marks in the progress 
of the labor movement. And is it too much 
to say that the anti-slavery movement culminat- 
ing in the Civil War and the subsequent rise of 
labor-unionism are the most vital facts of 
American history.'' 



PERSPECTIVE AND PROPORTIONS 5 

Commissioner Neill again says truly, "The 
labor movement is a struggle that has gone on 
since the beginning of the political history of 
society — a ceaseless and endless conflict — going 
back to the first effort of the subjugated and 
disfranchised to overthrow oppression, to 
sweep away privilege, and coming down to the 
present struggle to secure complete equality of 
opportunity for all men alike to work out their 
highest individual destinies, and for each to 
live the deepest, the fullest, the richest life pos- 
sible, and to develop to the fullest all the 
capacities with which his Creator may have en- 
dowed him." ^ 

This large conception of the labor movement 
is further warranted by the New Testament laws 
of labor. 

First, we have the law of the divine dignity 
of labor; "Whatsoever ye do, do it heartily as 
to the Lord." The conditions of toil must be 
transformed from the sordid to the sacra- 
mental. Labor's task is to perfect God's 
material creation. When God made the world, 
He saw indeed that it was good. But it was 
only a good beginning. It was a universe of 
raw materials, and He left it for the carpen- 
ters, the miners, the smiths, the weavers, and 
all hand-workers of subsequent times to take 

6 See "The Social Application of Religion," pp. 68-69. 



6 I'ERSPECTIVE AND PROPORTIONS 

those raw materials and work them over into 
the varied forms of beauty and usefulness 
which were to enrich and comfort the life of 
man. And so it was a fitting thing that God's 
Son, when he came as a Man, came also as a 
Carpenter. 

Labor's task is also the perfecting of 
humanity. The human race, like the physical 
universe, is in raw material. And in daily toil, 
not only commodities, but character is the 
product. 

Again we have the Christian law of labor's 
liberty. To an oppressed and revolutionary 
workingman the Christ declared that God being 
the Father of all, "then are the children free." 
And the labor movement, in making for equal- 
ity of opportunity, is achieving that only sort 
of liberty which is consistent with good order 
and economic progress and so fulfills the law of 
Christ. 

Thirdly, we have the Christian law of indus- 
trial democracy, "Ye know that the rulers of 
the Gentiles lord it over them, and their great 
ones exercise authority over them. Not so 
shall it be among you, but whosoever would be 
great among you shall be your minister, 
and whosoever would be first among you 
shall be your servant; even as the Son 
of man came not to be ministered unto 
but to minister, and to give his life a rap- 



PERSPECTIVE AND PROPORTIONS 7 

som for many." On a fair interpretation, 
these words seem to be identical with labor's 
demand for a share in the control as well as in 
the profits of industry. As Lyman Abbott 
says, "Autocracy in industry has had a fair 
trial with disastrous results. It has worked 
no better in industry than it has in the Church 
and in the State." ^ Of course the time will 
never come when business can be conducted 
without leaders, but the leaders must not be 
lords. In Christ's kingdom there will still be 
chieftains of industry, but the chieftain will 
be merely the chief servant and 

"Man to man, the warld o'er 
Will brothers be for a' that.'* 

So the labor movement is vast, venerable, and 
vital, — venerable, because of its age-long po- 
tency in human history; vast, because of its 
implications and influences with regard to the 
general welfare of mankind; vital, because its 
moral ideas and results involve those things 
by which civilizations live and die and the 
kingdom of heaven prevails. In these char- 
acters the labor movement relates itself, all but 
identifies itself, with the vitality and progress 
of the kingdom of Christ. In that relation it 
is to be considered in these pages. 

If it be asked. Why the Church and Labor 

7 "The Industrial Problem," p. 129. 



8 PERSPECTIVE AND PROPORTIONS 

rather than the Church and Capital, there 
are two sufficient answers. First, because labor 
is a function of life, while capital is a func- 
tion of things. "At the last analysis labor 
means the laborer." ^ Second, because labor- 
ers are the rule, and capitalists the exception. 
As Professor Ely says, "The labor movement 
represents mankind as it is represented by no 
other manifestation of the life of the nations 
of the earth, because the vast majority of the 
race are laborers." ^ 

8L. A. Banks: "Common Folks' Religion," p. 59. 
9 "The Social Application of Religion," p. 66. 



II 

THE ESTRANGEMENT OF THE 
CHURCH AND THE WAGE-EARNERS 

The most startling truth that can be told 
is lately being told so often that it is ceasing 
to startle us. It is this: that the modern 
Church and the wage-earning class are mu- 
tually estranged. Unless we move out of our 
fool's paradise in time, the present estrange- 
ment may at last develop a life-and-death 
emergency. For the Christian Church, if fi- 
nally alienated from the working-classes, would 
not be Christian. And the labor movement, un- 
inspired by Christian ideals, would be sordid in 
motive and chaotic in result. And society at 
large, with its two most potent forces thus 
perverted, would suffer disaster in its most 
vital interests. Such calamity may seem far- 
off, but the means of averting it are near at 
hand to-day, though they may not be to-mor- 
row. It is the purpose of the present chapter 
to inquire as to the extent, the nature, and the 
causes of the estrangement in question. 

1. As to its extent, we must first of all get 

clear of the notion that the Church is suffer- 
9 



10 CHURCH AND WAGE-EAKNERS 

ing a general decline. A recent and widely- 
read book a.sserts the estrangement of the 
working-classes to be so complete that 
"church-membership is steadily declining in 
proportion to population."-^ Almost simulta- 
neously with that statement appeared the no- 
table Census Bulletin which reported that in six- 
teen years the membership of the churches of 
the United States had increased over 60 per 
cent., while population was increasing but 34 
per cent. Nor can the former percentage be 
explained away by attributing it to immigra- 
tion from Roman Catholic countries. For the 
Protestant church-membership has increased 
nearly 44 per cent., which is 10 per cent, faster 
than population. The writer quoted makes 
sweeping denial of the reliability of church 
statistics. In that regard it should be suffi- 
cient to note that such statistics usually afford 
inadequate rather than an excessive enumera- 
tion of actual adherents ; witness the un- 
counted company of "brothers-in-law" and 
other supporters of the churches whose names 
are nowhere enrolled or reported. 

Misleading inferences are also drawn from 
the proportion of wage-earners counted in 
Sunday congregations. It is thus overlooked 
that laborers, by the conditions of their life, 

1 C. B. Thompson: "The Churches and the Wage Earn- 
ers," pp. viii and 7. 



CHURCH AND WAGE-EARNERS 11 

are necessarily irrefjular in church attendance. 
Even when they so desire, they are unable to 
maintain the same frequency of attendance as 
other social classes. With the extensive in- 
dustrial employment of women this considera- 
tion becomes an increasing- factor. A grave 
error is also made by those who overlook the 
millions of our working people adhering to the 
Romanist, the Greek and the Hebrew faiths. 
While our present concern is with Protestant- 
ism, we must not count these non-Protestant 
worshipers among "the estranged." It is, 
however, a matter of grave import that several 
million lapsed Romanists are to be found 
among the workingmen of this country, while 
we have it on good authority that there is also 
a serious "drift from the synagogue." 

Nor should we forget, as is often done, that 
two of the most numerous elements in the wage- 
earning population are by no means estranged 
from the churches. First, there are the so- 
called "soft-handed" laborers — clerks, sales- 
men, book-keepers, and many kinds of 
"agents." Secondly, there are the manual 
laborers of all trades in the smaller towns and 
villages. These two classes, millions strong, to- 
gether with the professional classes, who in 
their way are also wage-earners, probably con- 
stitute a majority of those who work for wages 
as well as a majority of adult church-members. 



n CHURCH AND WAGE-EARNERS 

On the other hand, these wage-earners have 
little or no class-consciousness or group cohe- 
sion; they are not unionized, and their social 
and personal affinities are largely with the other 
social classes. In other words, these who are 
not estranged are also not the laborers who 
make the labor movement. 

On the other hand, we are too complacent in 
citing the farmers as a class lo^^al to the 
Church. They are indeed laborers in the sense 
that they labor. But they are not "wage- 
earners"; they are capitalists. "Farm- 
hands," on the contrary, are wage-earners, 
and, we have much reason to believe, are also 
generally estranged from the Church. At the 
same time they sustain no active or direct part 
in the labor movement. 

We have still to consider the manual laborers 
of the cities, together with railway and mine 
workers. These workingmen are class-con- 
scious and unionized and are the movers of the 
labor movement. Are they estranged from the 
churches? Here we have come to the vital 
point in the modern social problem. Sadly be 
it said that the straws seem to indicate an 
adverse wind. President Plantz states that 
there were recently in this country 15,000,000 
men between sixteen and thirty-five years of 
age, and that 6,000,000 were in touch with the 
Church and 9,000,000 out of touch with it. 



CHURCH AND WAGE-EARNERS 13 

whether Protestant or Catholic.- It has been 
ascertained that in London only about six per 
cent, of the people attend church, while in the 
suburbs the percentage is about twenty-nine. 
A similar, though less extreme, condition ob- 
tains in American cities. Ex-President Bas- 
com states that in Pittsburg and Allegheny, 
with a working class population of some 300,- 
000 and a Protestant membership of 48,000, 
only 10 per cent, of the latter were working- 
men.^ The present writer has made inquiry 
as to the labor-membership of his own denomi- 
nation in certain cities."^ Replies from seven 
city churches in six states afford the following 
results : aggregate membership of the churches 
replying, 3,300 ; number of members who are 
manual laborers, 570 ; domestic employees, 
122; accountants, salesmen, stenographers, 
agents, clerks and teachers, 581 ; members of 
labor unions, 90. These figures should be con- 
sidered in view of two qualifying facts ; first, 
that most of the churches reporting are so con- 
ducted and environed as to reach an unusual pro- 
portion of working people ; second, that in sev- 
eral of these churches the manual laborers re- 
ported as church-members were, in dispropor- 
tionate number, women and minors. From the 

2 "The Church and the Social Problem," p. 197. 

3 "Social Theory," pp. 213)-214. 

4 See "Methodist Men," October, 1910. 



U CHURCH AND WAGE-EARNERS 

reports, thus explained, it seems on the one 
hand that these figures do not confirm the more 
alarming estimates sometimes made regarding 
the alienation of labor from the church, nor on 
the other hand, the easy optimism that sees no 
occasion for alarm at all. These figures, like 
others that have been compiled and analyzed 
with due care, seem to indicate that our city 
churches are not proportionately constituted 
of manual laborers and still less of trades-un- 
ionists. The seriousness of the matter lies not 
only in the great numbers thus alienated, but 
in the further facts : first, that the evil is char- 
acteristic of our cities, v/here all the social prob- 
lems have appeared in their most difficult 
forms; second, that the classes concerned are 
practically inclusive of organized labor. 

S. In what sense are the Church and the 
wage-earners estranged? A reliable answer is 
indicated in President Plantz's instructive cor- 
respondence with labor leaders. Of ninety- 
three who answered his inquiries, six expressed 
their attitude toward the Church as "cordial," 
eleven were "indifferent," seventy-three "dissat- 
isfied," three "hostile." Positive hostility and 
positive cordiality seem to be exceptional, and 
indifference or dissatisfaction all but universal 
among those wage-workers now under con- 
sideration.^ The more thoughtful among them 

e "The Church and the Social Problem," p. 81. 



CHURCH AND WAGE-EARNERS 15 

often suspect that the labor movement is not 
understood by the Church, that laboring-men 
are not heartily welcomed to its worship and 
membership, that money or the want of it con- 
trols the Church. As to the less thoughtful, 
the Church is often not in their thoughts at all. 

Nor is this all, or the worst. The Church, in 
much the same sense, is estranged from the 
wage-earners. While church-people are not, 
of course, positively hostile to laboring people, 
it is yet true that indifference and impatience 
too often mark the attitude of churchmen to- 
ward the labor movement. The Church thinks 
about as much and about as little of the union 
as the union does of the Church. Important 
as it is that workingmen should have a better 
appreciation of the Church, it is at least as 
important that churchmen should have a bet- 
ter appreciation of the labor movement. 

S. The causes of this evil are not far to 
seek. It is only blind uncharity that attributes 
it to the "sinfulness of laboring men." In 
that case all classes would be estranged from 
the Church, "for all have sinned and come 
short of the glory of God." The chief cause 
of the workingman's indifference is probably 
his complete preoccupation with other things. 
Exhausting labor and the menace of poverty, 
the break-up of household regularity, the clat- 
ter of traffic and transportation, the brilliancy, 



16 CHURCH AND WAGE-EARNERS 

variety and excitement of life in the modern 
city, are more than enough to pre-engage the 
mind and overcharge the life of the working- 
man in advance of the somewhat tardy and not 
too-pressing solicitations of the Church. And 
when the indifference awakens into conscious 
dissatisfaction, it is chiefly by way of reaction 
against the seeming indifference of the Church 
toward the labor movement. This reaction 
may be greatly in excess of its occasion, but 
what should concern Christian men is that it 
should have any occasion at all Another 
chief cause of the evil is immigration, bringing 
to us, as it has, millions of workingmen who 
lose their old-world ideals of religion without 
acquiring the new. 

We note with devout gratitude a tendency 
toward a better understanding on both sides. 
The Outlook recently said: "Certainly a few 
years ago there was abundant reason for the 
belief that most wage-earners, and particularly 
members of trades-unions, felt either unwel- 
come or unregarded in church, and, on the 
whole, when not indifferent, rather resentful 
that the churches had so little to say about 
their problems of life and about the relation 
of religion to their peculiar struggles. Within 
a few years, however, there has occurred a 
marked change." 

Marking this change are such signs as the 



CHURCH AND WAGE-EARNERS 17 

organic declarations of the religious denomina- 
tions concerning the labor problems, the ob- 
servance of Labor Sunday, the opening of labor 
gatherings with prayer, the exchange of 
fraternal delegates between ministerial bodies 
and labor unions, the mutually gratifying ut- 
terances of Church press and labor press, and 
the work of the social service organizations of 
the several denominations and the Social Ser- 
vice Commission of the Federated Churches. 
Probably no man can speak in this re- 
gard with more authority than Charles 
Stelzle, who says : "While there is still 
considerable alienation of the workingman 
from the Church, there is no other class of 
men among whom there is this conspicuous 
movement toward the Church."^ 

And yet the breach is not closed. 

6 ''The Church and Labor," p. 33. 



Ill 

LABOR'S COMPLAINT AGAINST THE 
CHURCH 

"Let judgment begin at the house of the 
Lord." The Church can save neither the social 
order nor itself unless it shall recognize its own 
short-comings. Of these the most perilous 
is its estrangement from the labor movement, 
an estrangement largely due to mutual misun- 
derstandings. Hence it is a primary necessity 
that churchmen should give a full, patient, and 
candid hearing to the complaints of laboring 
men against the Church. In so doing, our 
purpose must not be to controvert our critics, 
but to get a sympathetic understanding of their 
views, to judge and mend our own ways, and to 
find the common ground where they and we can 
work together for that grand-total of all 
human interests which we call the Kingdom of 
God. 

A statement follows of labor's complaint 
against the Church. It may not be all the 
truth nor even all true, but it is urged by men 
who speak in good faith, and hence it should 
help us to know the truth. 
18 



LABOR AND THE CHURCH 19 

1. It is charged that the Church "has al- 
ways stood by the ruling classes, because — it 
did not dare to oppose the men or the govern- 
ment which gave it support."^ In Richard 
Heath's phrase, it is "the captive City of God," 
and in the younger Henry George's, "the 
Nobles of Privilege are the chief patrons of the 
Church and have an overmastering influence."^ 
In evidence of such charges they cite the co- 
incidence of ecclesiastical wealth and popular 
poverty during th^ middle ages ; the opposi- 
tion of Luther to the rising of the German 
peasants ; the alliance of King and Church 
against the Commons of England; Adam 
Smith's arraignment of the Church in the 
Eighteenth Century for its servility to wealth,^ 
the attitude of American churches toward the 
anti-slavery movement ; the almost unanimous 
vote of the English bishops in the House of 
Lords against the Workingmen's Compensation 
Act, the anti-liquor bills, and the Lloyd-George 
budget; the familiar clerical apologies for 
Standard Oil, and the opposition of prominent 
laymen to child-labor laws and social legisla- 
tion of almost every sort. 

It might seem easy to argue that all this 

iSee C. Stelzle: "The Church and Labor," p. 9. 

2 "The Menace of Privilege," p. 321. 

3 See "The Wealth of Nations," Book V, Ch. I, Part 
III, Art. III. 



20 LABOR AND THE CHURCH 

is only a part -truth, and even a perverted view 
of that part. But it will be more profitable 
for us to reflect on the part that is true in 
spite of partial or perverted views. There is 
at least occasion for complaint on the part of 
laborers and for concern on the part of church- 
men. 

2. It is charged that the Church is usually 
neutral when not hostile toward labor's efforts 
to uplift humanity. Josiah Strong writes that 
he "knows personally of a committee of labor 
men who tried to secure the passage of a law 
limiting child-labor, and in a great city not one 
clergyman could be found to give them more 
than casual help ;" while, "in another city, 
some years ago, not one clergyman could be 
found to aid the bakers agitate for a law giv- 
ing them Sunday rest." ^ The Commission of 
the Federated Churches of America found that 
in a recent and already historic strike for a 
weekly rest day, the local ministerial union had 
administered a sharp rebuke to the strikers for 
alleged disorders, but no corresponding rebuke 
to the employers who, for some years, had been 
requiring an unnecessary and increasing 
amount of Sunday labor. The Archbishop of 
Canterbury said that he worked seventeen hours 
a day, and had no time left to solve the prob- 

4 "The Gospel of the Kingdom," May, 1910, p. 62. 



LABOR AND THE CHURCH 21 

lem of the unemployed ; to which ICeir Hardie 
rephed: "A religion which demands seventeen 
hours a day for organization and leaves no 
time for thought about starving men, women, 
and children, has no message for this age." ^ 
In other words, the Church is too much pre- 
occupied with working its own machinery. 

Of course it can be said again that this is 
only a partial truth. But again it will be bet- 
ter for us to dwell on the partial truth than on 
the partial error of such complaints. Or, we 
may point to the organic declarations of the 
several Protestant denominations and to those 
of their Federal Council, by all of which the 
churches are committed to the cause of labor 
and against all social injustice. To this the 
laboring men may reply that the Church, by 
such declarations, has not fully put itself in the 
right, but has rather acknowledged a standard 
of right by which not only the social order but 
the Church itself is to be judged. And work- 
ingmen are now asking with some sharpness 
whether our deeds are fulfilling the promise of 
our declarations. 

3. A working-man asks : "Is it not a fact 

that in most churches to-day the great 

majority of so-called 'better class' people look 

down upon the workingman, who spends his life 

5 See "Annals of the American Academy of Social 
Science," Nov., 1907, p. 18. 



22 LABOR AND THE CHURCH 

in toiling for their necessities and luxuries, and 
do not associate with him as a brother?"® A 
distinguished High Church rector testifies that 
there are churches in which "the presence of the 
poor is regarded as bad form. If Christ him- 
self were to enter them, the pew-opener would 
ask, What is that Carpenter doing here?"''^ 
A prominent English man of letters writes : "I 
regard pews and pew-rents as distinctly anti- 
Christian. They foster class-distinctions. 
They keep the poor at a distance. They en- 
courage snobbishness, and give point to the 
sneer that Churches only want those who are 
able to pay." Personally, one may be sure 
that much of this appearance of exclusiveness 
is a misunderstanding due to differences between 
the conventional manners of the rich and the 
poor. Nevertheless, every man who travels is 
probably acquainted, as is the writer, with 
churches where a measure of snobbery is unmis- 
takable. It were better for the Church to be 
patient under a hundred false suspicions than to 
countenance this abomination in a single in- 
stance. 

4. Wage-earners join the outcry against 
the discrepanc}^ between the way we worship on 

6 See George Haw: "Christianity and the Working 
Classes," p. 4, cf. p. 144. 

7 Quoted by H, George, Jr. ; "The Menace of Priv- 
ilege," p. 40T. 



LABOR AND THE CHURCH 23 

Sunday and the way we do business on Mon- 
day. The}" declare that many of the injustices 
which they combat are practiced by men who 
seem to be acceptable members of the Churches. 
t still believe that churchmen are responsible 
less often than other employers for such abuses 
as child-labor, unfenced machinery, unsanitary 
shops, and unjust blacklisting. Nevertheless 
the difference is so inconsiderable that work- 
ingmen seeking work do not usually inquire 
which employers are church-members and which 
are not. And without conceding all that is 
said concerning such inconsistencies, it is yet 
undeniable that the moral teachings of the 
Church have not yet proved effective to the 
degree of making social injustices equally 
scandalous with drunkenness or adultery on the 
part of church-members. 

5. Wage -earners charge the Church with 
culpable ignorance. The Hon. Arthur Hen- 
derson, M. P., one of the world's great labor 
leaders and also a leader in Christian work, 
writes thus : "The Churches have not ap- 
preciated the real meaning and the true in- 
wardness of many of the movements which the 
workers themselves have initiated and developed 
for their social and industrial ameliora- 
tion. . . . Possessed of only a very super- 
ficial knowledge of the question, the Churches, 
for instance have concluded that unemployment 



M LABOR AND THE CHURCH 

was mainly due to intemperance, pauperism, 
the result of thriftlessness, and like the Priest 
and the Levite, they have passed by on the 
other side." ^ Or consider the exasperating 
untactfulness of the ministers who lately asked 
of a body of strikers, "Is it reasonable to ex- 
pect that, by attacking your employer openly 
and in secret and by trying to destroy his 
property and his business, you can best per- 
suade him to deal generously and magnani- 
mously with you?" No one ought to meddle 
with labor controversies until he understands 
that self-respecting workingmen regard as an 
insult the insinuation that they ask for "gen- 
erosity" or "magnanimity" or anything else 
than simple justice. 

No graver duty rests with Christian men 
than to understand the labor problem. They 
must know it by careful study of economic 
authorities and by living and fraternal contact 
with the laboring people. They must know 
what the gospel has to say about it and how 
that gospel applies to the crisis of to-day. 
Otherwise the Church remains at fault. 

6. We must consider without pre-judgment 

the workingman's complaint that we are often 

unjust and inconsistent in our criticisms of the 

labor movement. He says that we often con- 

8 See George Haw: "Christianity and the Working 
Classes," pp. 1^0, 134. 



LABOR AND THE CHURCH 25 

demn a great and beneficent social movement 
because of certain minor incidents ; that we 
are content with hearing one side of the con- 
troversy, and that the anti-labor side. He adds 
that the Church itself "need not go very far 
back in its own history to find duplicated nearly 
everything we deplore in Organized Labor to- 
day, even down to boycotting and slugging," ^ 
witness certain memories of Smithfield and of 
Boston Common. Or, with modern reference, 
he complains that we denounce the unions for 
certain practices which we follow in the 
churches ; for instance, that "the ministry is a 
closed shop, guarding its privileges as jealously 
as does the average trade-union." 

7. Wage-workers complain of the Church 
"that it teaches the poor to be submissive under 
present injustice, since all things will be made 
right in heaven." Or, as Ruskin puts it, "You 
knock a man into the ditch and then tell him 
to remain content in the position in which 
Providence has placed him." Perhaps it is 
nearer the truth to say that the patience we 
preach in these days is an active patience, — • 
invincible perseverance, optimism, courage and 
unselfishness, striving not indeed to revenge 
wrongs but to rectify them. Yet under labor's 
error here, lies an error of the Church. For 

9C. Stelzle: "The Church and Labor," pp. 11 and 14. 



26 LABOR AND THE CHURCH 

has not the Church hitherto, while duly wit- 
nessing for providence and immortality, some- 
what failed in witnessing for social justice? 
And have we duly developed the masculine and 
militant type of piety? 

8. "We labor men," writes Arthur Hender- 
son, "are not unmindful of the vast amount of 
effort the Churches are making; visiting the 
sick, clothing the naked, feeding the hungry, 
comforting the sorrowing. What we deplore 
is the fact that co-incident with such relief 
the Churches have not attempted to get at the 
root-cause of all the evil and distress. If they 
would display the same amount of energy in 
seeking to eradicate from our collective life the 
evil it contains, that they have shown in seek- 
ing to deliver the individual life from sin, there 
would have been less call for their relief 
work." ^° Concerning this charge there is one 
comment to be made: it is substantially true. 

A final summary is thus put into a parable 
by Hugh Price Hughes : Someone was com- 
mending a certain preacher in highest terms. 
But a listener made this unanswerable an- 
swer: "After all, he doesn't remind me of Jesus 
Christ." Zion's Herald adds: "The minister 
and the Church may be doing very creditable 
and useful work, but they are not Christian in 

10 See G. Haw: Op. cit. p. 135. 



LABOR AND THE CHURCH 27 

the full and essential use of the terra if the 
laboring man is still able to say, 'They do not 
remind me of Jesus Christ.' " 



IV 

LABOR'S COMPLAINT AGAINST THE 
SOCIAL ORDER 

One of the great religious denominations has 
lately made the organic declaration: "We 
cordially declare our fraternal interest in the 
aspirations of the laboring classes, and our de- 
sire to assist them in the righting of every 
wrong." Are there any such wrongs to be 
righted? Labor answers with the following 
grave complaints against the social order, 
namely, non-employment, over-employment, un- 
just distribution, unfair discrimination, and the 
under-appraisement of humanity. The first 
four will be considered in the present and the 
fifth in our next chapter. 

1. NON-EMPLOYMENT 
Truly said Carlyle: "A man willing to work 
and unable to find work is perhaps the saddest 
sight that Fortune's inequality exhibits under 
the sun." Always there are many such men. 
Not long ago there were probably three million 
in the United States. Organized wage-earners 
probably suffer the least from this cause and 
yet we have it on the authority of the New York 
28 



LABOR AND THE SOCIAL ORDER 29 

State Commission that "organized workers lose 
on the average twenty per cent, of their pos- 
sible income through unemployment." ^ 

It is a two-fold wrong. First, to the labor- 
ing man, because the right to labor is a neces- 
sary corollary of the right to life. The 
world owes no man a living but does owe every 
man a chance to make a living. Unemploy- 
ment is also a wrong to society. The unem- 
ployed often become the unemployable. The 
idle are natural candidates for mendicancy, 
vagrancy and crime, and are often forced into 
pauperism, temporary or chronic. The New 
York Commission gives data from the charit- 
able societies showing that "from twenty-five to 
thirty-five per cent, of those who apply to them 
for relief every year have been brought to their 
destitute condition primarily through lack of 
work." 2 

On these facts Louis D. Brandeis makes the 
following just comments : "Some irregularity in 
employment is doubtless inevitable; but in the 
main irregularity is remediable. It has been 
overcome with great profit to both employer 
and employee in important businesses which 
have recognized the problem as one seriously 
demanding solution. Society and industry 
need only the necessary incentive to secure a 

1 See "The Otulook," June 10, 1911, pp. 293-294. 

2 See "The Outlook," loc. cit. 



30 LABOR AND THE SOCIAL ORDER 

great reduction in irregularity of employment. 
In the scientifically managed business irregular- 
ity tends to disappear. So far as it is irreme- 
diable it should be compensated for like the in- 
evitable accident." ^ 

2. OVER-EMPLOYMENT 

Not only are many who ought to work de- 
prived of work, but many who work are over- 
worked, and many "^ho ought not to work are 
compelled to work. Nor is it relevant to say 
that there is no law of nature prescribing the 
eight-hour day. The law of nature does pre- 
scribe that the hours of work must not pass the 
"point at which normal fatigue becomes 
pathological fatigue." For it is known to 
science that over-work literally poisons the 
worker. And with physical comes spiritual 
demoralization. Twelve hours a day for seven 
daj^s in the week, the actual labor-time of many 
thousands, means the abolition of life save in 
its animal and mechanical processes. The 
workingman is often told that he works no 
harder nor longer than his employer. But he 
knows that all factories are open earlier than 
most offices, that employers take summer vaca- 
tions and foreign tours, while he himself rarely 
travels except on foot hunting a job, and that 
even the hardest-working employer is working 

3 See "The Outlook," loc. cit. 



LABOR AND THE SOCIAL ORDER 31 

for himself and his own ambition, which makes 
the greatest difference in the world. 

The supreme evil of over-employment is the 
exploitation of the labor of women and children. 
Concerning the former, for instance, it is a law 
of nature that women should work fewer hours 
per day and fewer days per month than 
men, and when economic greed violates this law 
the penalty in disqualified motherhood is the 
costliest price that human society can pay for 
its sins. The present coincidence between the 
diminished general birth-rate and the increased 
birth-rate of defectives and degenerates is the 
most disheartening portent that now appears, 
or could appear, at this time of social crisis. 
And these two ominous facts are attributable, 
according to high authority, in large measure 
to the overstrain of modern industrialism, par- 
ticularly in its exhausting demands on woman- 
hood.^ 

In the United States some two million chil- 
dren under sixteen years of age are gainfully 
employed. Of these, 800,000 are ten to thir- 
teen years old, unknown thousands under 
ten, and 400,000 engaged in occupations 
usualh^ deleterious to child-life. ^ Yet figures 
are inadequate. For the tragedy of the pres- 

4 Dr. M. G. Schlapp in "The Outlook," April 6, 1912, 
p. 782. 

5 The New Encyclopedia of Social Reform, art. "Child 
Labor." 



32 LABOR AND THE SOCIAL ORDER 

ent is only suggestive of the consequences yet 
to ensue. The evil does not end with the pain 
and pleading of the children. Reyond these is 
the evil which society must suffer in its most 
vital interests, — the standard of living, the in- 
tegrity of the home, and the future intelligence 
and efficiency of its citizens. In some coming 
crisis of our history, the alternative may then 
be decided by the votes of illiterates and de- 
generates, or its armies destroyed by bacilli 
more deadly than bullets. 

3. UNJUST DISTRIBUTION 

Labor complains of three conditions under 
which it gets less than its equitable share of 
the total economic product. 

First, when it gets less than a living wage. 
The New York City Charity Organization 
estimates $800 to $900 per annum as a living 
wage in that city for a man with average 
family.^ In this light ponder the fact that 
some million families enjoy an annual income 
of less than $500 ^ and that our average fac- 
tory wages are $572. ^ Surely all family-in- 
comes falling below the latter average are less 
than a living wage, and such families include 

6 See E. T. Devine: "Misery and its causes" pp. 107- 
108. 

7 See articles in the American Magazine, March, 1907, 
by J. Jacobs and March, 1910, by Ida M. Tarbell. 

8 See "The Survey," Sept. 3, 1910, p. 810. 



LABOR AND THE SOCIAL ORDER 33 

a large proportion of our working population. 
Again, labor receives less than its share when- 
ever others receive more than theirs. One per 
cent, of our people own 50 per cent, of the 
wealth and nine per cent, own 71 per cent.^ 
Can we believe that one per cent, of the people 
have earned as much as the other ninety-nine 
per cent.? Or nine per cent, of us, two and a 
half times as much as the other ninety-one per 
cent. ? The presumption thus raised seems quite 
conclusive when we note the sources of these for- 
tunes. The New York Tribune has published 
a list of 1103 millionaires in that city. It fur- 
ther appears that three-fourths of these men 
had derived their wealth chiefly from some form 
of economic surplus, — as monopoly, marginal 
betting, unearned increment of land, some sort 
of "special privilege," — or in one word, 
plunder. For all this wealth had been pro- 
duced by somebody, and any part of it not pro- 
duced by those who have taken it, must have 
been taken from those who have produced it, 
namely, the wage-earning class. All this gives 
too much reality to such familiar and unlovely 
phrases as "predatory wealth/' "the favored 
few," and "the disinherited masses." As 
Henry D. Lloyd said, "The fortunes of these 
lords of industry and these interceptors of 

9 See J. Bascom: "Social Theory," p. 269, and R. T. 
Ely: "Socialism and Social Reform," pp. 274-275. 



3^ LABOR AND THE SOCIAL ORDER 

trade are not remuneration for services, — they 
are the ransom paid by the people for their 
lives." 

Thirdly, it appears that labor receives less 
than its share when it receives a diminishing 
proportion of the increase of wealth. Note 
that it is not said "portion" but "proportion." 
For the following calcoilations approximate 
correctness, not absolute exactness, is claimed. ^^ 
From 1860 to 1880 the per capita wealth of the 
country increased 70 per cent., while real wages 
(measured in purchasing power) had not in- 
creased, perhaps had slightly decreased. From 
1881 to 1900 per capita wealth had increased 
43 per cent, and real wages not more than 25 
per cent. From 1900 to 1910 money-wages in- 
creased about 19 per cent., but owing to dis- 
proportionate increase in prices, real wages de- 
creased at least 11 per cent. And yet, during 
only four years of this latter period the na- 
tional wealth had increased twenty billion dol- 
lars, the greatest advance in material pros- 

10 Cf. R. T. Ely: "The Evolution of Industrial So- 
ciety," pp. 103, 112-113; \V. Gladden: "Applied Chris- 
tianity," p. 12^0; the Aldrich Senate Report, 1893, on 
"Wholesale Prices, Wages," etc., Part I, p. 100; the pub- 
lications of the American Statistical Association, March, 
1899, article by Professor C. J. Bullock; The New En- 
cyclopaedia of Social Reform, p. 1266; Bulletins of the 
U. S. Bureau of Labor, 1900, p. 914, and March, 1902, 
p. 235; "The Outlook," March 12, 1910, p. 570. 



LABOR AND THE SOCIAL ORDER 35 

peritj ever recorded in the history of any na- 
tion. 

Again the wrong to labor re- acts upon 
society. For social cohesion is weakened and 
social progress checked when a great social 
class, unable to share proportionately in the 
general prosperity, is thus fore-doomed to 
thwarted effort and chronic discontent. With 
regard to the rich who will not work and the 
poor who can't get work, labor has a grievance 
until all men are laborers. 

4. UNFAIR DISCRIMINATION 

Labor complains that its cause has not been 
given an impartial hearing, and that the higher 
ideals and influences of the labor movement 
and of the labor unions have not been duly 
recognized. The public press is necessarily 
owned by capital and edited by men belonging 
to the so-called "higher classes," and hence, in 
spite of good intentions, often seems to give 
labor less than a square deal. For instance, 
the frequent assumption that labor-unionism is 
nothing else than organized disorder is largely 
due to' the fact that the worse features of 
unionism are always given the widest publicity, 
and the better often quite ignored. The Na- 
tional Civic Federation, perhaps better quali- 
fied than any other agency to render a dis- 
criminating and unbiased finding, has published 



36 LABOR AND THE SOCIAL ORDER 

a most impressive protest against the injustice 
thus done the cause of labor. ^^ 

Labor complains of less than a square deal 
in the courts. Mr. Roosevelt thus defines the 
position which he holds in common with the 
representatives of the laboring-class : "I do not 
for one moment believe that the masses of our 
judges are actuated by any but worthy motives. 
Nevertheless, I do believe that they often 
signally fail to protect the laboring man and 
the laboring man's widow and children in their 
just rights and that heart-breaking and pitiful 
injustice too often results therefrom; and this 
primarily because our judges lack either the 
opportunity or the power thoroughly to under- 
stand the working man's and working woman's 
position and vital needs." ^^ In this regard it 
is to be noted, first, that the expense of litiga- 
tion largely nullifies for the poor man the prin- 
ciple of equality before the law. Justice at the 
end of his suit is an empty promise unless mean- 
while he can afford to pay for "legal talent" 
and "the law's delay." It is no less an au- 
thority than President Taft who says : "The 
one thing which disgraces our civilization to- 
day is the delays of civil and criminal justice 
and these delays always work in favor of the 

11 See Adams and Sumner: "Labor Problems," p. 211n. 
Cf. J. Bascom: "Social Theory," pp. 109, 114. 

12 "The New Nationalism." 



LABOR AND THE SOCIAL ORDER 37 

man with the longest purse." ^^ At a recent 
date there were pending in the courts two cases 
of workinginen's claims still undertermined 
after ten years of litigation and another after 
eleven years. ^* And now comes the report of 
damages awarded to an injured workingman 
after twenty-two years of litigation, the crown- 
ing disgrace of American judicature, ^^ In 
nearly every nation of Europe these poor 
people would have received immediate justice 
without having to go to law at all. Further- 
more, as said by Grieorge L. Bolen, one of the 
severest critics of organized labor, "The courts 
are too often bound unduly by the views and 
predilections of the capitalistic class to which 
by birth and association they belong." ^® 
This may account in part for some of the 
antiquated precedents which govern employers' 
liability, freedom of contract, class legislation, 
and the writ of injunction, all serving to put 
working people at a disadvantage in the courts. 
As to injunctions, laboring-men may often be 
in the wrong. Nevertheless many of us will 
agree that the workingmen are in the right 
when protesting that the injunction power is 
abused when used as follows: (1) to enjoin men 

13 See McClure's Magazine, June, 1910, p. 151. 

14 Do, p. 154. 

15 See "The Outlook," Dec. 23, 1911, p. 924. 

16 "Getting a Living," p. 6Q6. 



88 LABOR AND THE SOCIAL ORDER 

from doing concertedly what they have the 
legal right to do individually: (2) as a sub- 
terfuge for depriving unconvicted men of trial 
by jury: (3) to suspend men's rights without 
notice and then leave them undetermined pend- 
ing a long-deferred hearing. 

At present there is a great outcry against 
any criticism of the courts at all. Mr. Roose- 
velt, no less than Mr. Gompers, is denounced 
because he ventures to express an opinion of 
his own regarding certain adjudications. Now 
both may be wrong in their criticisms but it 
does not follow that criticism is wrong. If so, 
then the courts themselves must be guilty of 
the same wrong, for they criticise one another. 
And every member of our Supreme Court itself 
must often thus do wrong, for every one of them 
has often dissented from the decisions of the 
majority. And Abraham Lincoln must have 
been wrong, for his criticisms of the Supreme 
Court makes Mr. Roosevelt's sound tame. And 
history itself must be wrong, for it now sanc- 
tions Lincoln's criticisms of the Dred Scott de- 
cision. The truth is that a judicial decision is 
usually something more than a declaration of 
the law; it is a declaration of how the law ap- 
plies to facts. Granting that the judges are the 
best judges of the law, it is still true that the 
sociologist, the legislator, the labor leader, or 
even the "man on the street," may be a better 



LABOR AND THE SOCIAL ORDER 39 

judge of the facts to which the law is applied. 
Hence the laboring man is not necessarily pre- 
sumptous when he makes a calm and candid ap- 
peal from the courts to public opinion. To 
claim infallibility for the courts is no less than 
political superstition. The courts make no 
such claim for themselves. Indeed it is a Jus- 
tice of the Supreme Court of New York who has 
lately written the following remarkable words : 
"Confidence in our courts does not require 
that their decisions on economic questions shall 
be regarded as binding rules of political con- 
duct on such questions. . . . So long as 
our courts exercise this power to pass upon the 
constitutionality of statutes which reflect legis- 
lative policy on matters affecting the common 
good, so long will the principles of government 
underlying their decisions in such cases be sub- 
ject tj debate." ^^ 

Such is labor's complaint against the social 
order, with this added, — the under-valuation of 
human life by a world that over-values gold 
and gain. Nor can it be dismissed by saying 
that the labor-movement itself is only a mani- 
festation of greed, the sordid envy of "the have- 
nots" for "the haves." For the demand for 
higher wages and shorter hours simply voices 
the demand for justice, and this it is that gives 
moral authority to the labor-movement. 

17 See "The Outlook," March 4, 1911, p. 489. 



40 LABOR AND THE SOCIAL ORDER 

Nor can we silence labor's complaint by say- 
ing that it is the best paid labor which com- 
plains the most. This cynical commonplace 
has its reproof in the words of Thomas Car- 
lyle: "No doubt of it. The best paid work- 
men are they alone that can so complain ! How 
shall he, the handloomweaver, who in the day 
that is passing over him has to find food for 
the day, strike work? If he strike work, he 
starves within the week. He is past complaint ! 
The fact itself, however, is one which, if we 
consider it, leads us into still deeper regions of 
the malady. . . . It is not what a man 
has outwardly or wants that constitutes the 
happiness or misery of him. . . . It is the 
feeling of injustice that is insupportable to all 
men. . . . No man can bear it, or ought 
to bear it. A deeper law than any parchment- 
law whatsoever, a law written direct by the 
hand of God in the inmost being of man, in- 
cessantly protests against it. What is injus- 
tice? Another name for disorder, for unverac- 
ity, unreality, a thing which veracious created 
Nature, even because it is not Chaos and a 
waste-whirling baseless Phantasm, rejects and 
diso^vns. It is not the outward pain of injus- 
tice; that, were it even the flaying of the back 
with knotted scourges, the severing of the head 
with guillotines, is comparatively a small mat- 
ter. The real smart is the soul's pain and 



LABOR AND THE SOCIAL ORDER 41 

stigma, the hurt inflicted on the moral self. 
The rudest clown must draw himself up into an 
attitude of battle, and resistance to the death, 
if such be off'ered him. He cannot live under 
it ; his own soul aloud, and all the universe, with 
silent continual beckonings, says 'It cannot 
be.' " ^^ Thus the labor problem is more than a 
sordid conflict between "the haves and the have- 
nots." Its concern is with the rights of men 
and therefore with the will of God. And with 
a great poet of modern Christendom we may 
well believe that the Christ sees and cares : 

"O Nazareth Carpenter who curst ' 

The pride and avarice of thy day, 
We would observe thy birth, but first 
Thy Sermon on the Mount obey. 

"If thou shouldst come once more to men 
In this, thy later promised land, 

Would not Thy great heart break again 
To find these wrongs on every hand. 

"Labor, heart-smitten, left to die. 

Beneath the feet of Conquest hurled, 
Or, lifting Hatred's torch on high. 
Wreaking revenge upon the world." 
18 "Chartism": Chapters ly and V. 



THE CHEAPNESS OF HUMAN LIFE 

Labor's gravest charge against our economic 
system is the under-appraisement of human life. 
Business proceeds too largely on the assump- 
tion that money is worth more than men. 

It is reliably estimated that 30,000 wage- 
earners are killed annually by industrial acci- 
dents and e500,000 seriously injured ;-'^ that there 
are over 13,000,000 cases of sickness each year 
among industrial workers and 50,000 deaths 
from industrial diseases ; that at least one-third 
of this suffering and mortality is preventable; 
that the pecuniary loss to the laboring class 
from these causes is at least three-quarters of a 
billion dollars annually.^ It was a startling 
coincidence that during three years of the Boer 
War the number of British soldiers killed was 
almost an exact equation with the number killed 
on American railways during the same three 

1 Bulletin of the U. S. Bureau of Labor, 1906. 

2 "The American Labor Legislation Review," Jan., 
1911, p. 127, and "The Prevention of Industrial Acci- 
dents," pp. 1 and 2, published by the Fidelity and 
Casualty Company of New York. - 



CHEAPNESS OF HUIVIAN LIFE 43 

jears.^ In the United States in 1909 nine rail- 
way employees were killed every twenty-four 
hours and one either killed or injured every 
seven minutes.^ "At the present rate it would 
take only se\enteen years to kill or injure all 
the railway employees on the rolls." ^ Or what 
could be more startling than the fact that the 
number of lives sacrificed to the industries of the 
United States during the last four years is 
about the same as the number killed in battle 
during the four years of the Civil War? It is 
also a tragic record that among the employees 
of at least ten of the leading industries of the 
United States from one-third to one-half the 
deaths were due to tuberculosis and that one- 
third to two-fifths of these fatal cases of tuber- 
culosis were fairly attributable to the character 
of the employment. In other words, taking 
account of only a single disease and of no acci- 
dents, these industries are chargeable with eleven 
to twenty per cent, of all deaths among their 
emploj^ees.^ Still more tragic are the records 
of certain great insurance companies showing 
that the average death-rate among working- 

3 J. G. Brooks: "The Social Unrest,'^ p. 210. 

4 D. L. Cease in "The American Labor Legislation Re- 
view," Jan., 1911, p. 43. 

5McClure's Magazine, June, 1910, p. 165. 
6 Publication No. 10 of the American Association for 
Labor Legislation. 



M CHEAPNESS OF HUMAN LIFE 

men at their most productive age — 25 to 35 
years — is nearly twice as great as the death 
rate among men engaged in other than manual 
occupations/ 

We must remember that this is more than a 
matter of dry statistics. Back of the statistics 
are human beings. An "industrial accident" 
does not mean merely that another unit is to 
be added to a column of figures. It means the 
"agony of the crushed arm or the anguished 
leap of the workman's nerve under the boiling 
metal." It m.eans the rush of the ambulance, 
the carnage of the operating table, the long 
nights of burning thirst and infernal delirium in 
the hospital. It means the asylum or the alms- 
house. Nor is an "occupational disease" just 
a medical classification. It means, for instance, 
"phossy jaw," a horror so loathsome that ex- 
perienced surgeons sometimes faint while treat- 
ing it, so persistent that sometimes life can be 
saved only by amputation of the victim's jaw, 
leaving him a life worse than death. In one 
form or another some human tragedy is repre- 
sented by every unit in these thousands and 
millions of industrial casualties and diseases. 
Not war alone, but work sometimes, is hell. 

Labor demands justice, not pity. For these 
tragedies of our industrial warfare, while due 

7 Louis D. Brandeis in "The Outlook," June 10, 1911, 
p. 293. 



CHEAPNESS OF HUMAN LIFE 45 

in some cases to the fact that they are unavoid- 
able, are due in many cases to the fact that it 
would cost money to avoid them. Phosphorus 
necrosis, the culminating horror of occupational 
diseases, is due solely to an economy of five per 
cent, in the manufacture of matches. On one 
of our great railroads the casualties in 1906 
were S097. The next year the road's traffic 
had greatly increased in all respects, ton-mile- 
age, passenger-mileage, train-mileage, and car- 
mileage, and yet the casualties had diminished 
to 1209 as the result of an effective system of 
block signals and safety appliances installed 
that year.^ In the year 1911 the Chicago and 
Northwestern Railroad put into operation a 
thorough system of safety appliances and regu- 
lations resulting in the reduction of fatal acci- 
dents among several classes of employees in the 
following percentages : train-men 50 per cent., 
switchmen 40 per cent., station-men 50 per 
cent., car-repairers and inspectors 85 per cent.^ 
From such data it is no strained inferencce that 
at least one-third of our railroad accidents has 
been attributable to the homicidal parsimony 
which would not pay for the available safe- 
guards. In the coal mines of the United States 

8 See The Saturday Evenings Post, July 25, 1908, ar- 
ticle, "The Carnage of Peace." 

9 See "The Northwestern Christian Advocate," Jan. 
10, 1912. 



46 CHEAPNESS OF HUMAN LIFE 

30,000 men have been killed during the last 
twenty years, and while we have neglected the 
methods of prevention and rescue in general use 
in Europe, the annual death-rate of the coal 
regions has been steadily rising here and steadily 
declining there. Mills and machines afford 
the same evidence. Broken belts cause many 
of our cruelest accidents. Yet belts can be 
protected. The bursting of over-pressed 
boilers in 1905 caused 385 deaths and 505 in- 
juries in this country; largely a needless 
carnage, as appears from the fact that Great 
Britain compels precautions which have kept 
the number of like casualties there at the low 
average of 28 deaths and 60 injuries per 
annum during a period of twenty years. ^^ In 
the 3^ear 1906 in factories of one state a hun- 
dred men were killed, or crippled for life, by 
one little shop-device called the set-screw. ^^ 
"The set-screw stands up from the surface of 
the rapidly revolving shafts and, as it turas, 
catches dangerously at hands and clothes. 
For thirty-five cents this danger-device could 
be recast into a safety-device." Thus from 
all ranges of industry come the damning evi- 

11 The Saturday Evening Post, loc. cit, 

12 E. T. Davis, State Factory Inspector of Illinois, 
quoted by W. Hard in "Injured in Course of Duty." 
See also "The Prevention of Industrial Accidents," p. 
185. (Published by the Fidelity and Casualty Co. of 
N. Y). 



CHEAPNESS OF HUiMAN LIFE 47 

dences of our national greed. Labor's demand 
for legal protection to life and limb is a de- 
mand for the most elementary justice. 

Adequate justice would consist in the pre- 
vention of these evils. So far as this proves 
impracticable, the minimum of justice would 
then be assured compensation. Yet the truth 
is that the doctrines of our courts as to con- 
tributory negligence, the negligence of fel- 
low-servants, and the assumption of risks, are 
such that compensation is the exception rather 
than the rule. It is estimated "that not one 
in eleven injured workmen sues, and of those 
who sue not one in ten recovers." If our in- 
dustries must consume arms, legs, lungs and 
lives, why shouldn't we pay for them? There 
is moral authority hardly less than prophetic 
in the demands which a modern journalist thus 
puts to the social conscience: "Shall the 
laborer really donate that arm to us, or shall 
not we, refusing to live on lost arms, return 
to him the mere, but exact, commercial value 
of the loss he has sustained.^ Why shouldn't 
every industry carry the burden of its own 
killed and wounded.? Why shouldn't compen- 
sation for disability be just as much a cost of 
the business as it is of the cost of war.? Why 
shouldn't the industrial soldier, meeting his 
death in forms as terrible as those of any 
battle-field, die knowing that he will leave, if 



48 CHEAPNESS OF HUMAN LIFE 

not glory, at least a few years' food to his 
family? Why shouldn't society^ having in- 
vented machines which make business one long 
war, treat the enlisted men at least like en- 
listed men and, if they are incapacitated, as- 
sign them temporarily or permanently, to the 
rank and pay of pensioners of peace ?" ^^ And 
it seems about time that Emerson's prophecy 
should come true: "When it is presented to the 
American people, I believe they will say it is 
just as fair to charge up every year the 
depreciation in men as it is to charge 
up the depreciation in machinery and build- 
ings." 14 

These considerations call for the enactment 
of the following program. (1) The radical 
modification of the common-law defenses 
against employers' liability. (2) The es- 
tablishment of governmental institutions for 
the invention of safety and sanitary devices, 
and for the scientific study, prevention and 
treatment of occupational diseases. (3) 
Laws enforcing the use of every approved 
safety-mechanism and sanitary provision in 
industry. (4) Laws insuring equitable, im- 
mediate and certain compensation to all victims 
of industrial casualty and disease, or their 
families. The latter measure would be doubly 

13 W. Hard, op. cit. 

14 Essay onf Compensation. 



CHEAPNESS OF HUMAN LIFE 49 

efficacious. Beside affording effective relief to 
actual sufferers, it would also reduce such 
suffering to the minimum ; for when it must 
all be paid for in full, then it will be found 
cheaper to employ every safeguard. The 
equities of this matter are thus summarized by 
the Bishops of the Methodist Episcopal 
Church in their official address of 1908: "So 
far as greed makes such things possible the 
Master whom we serve demands from us the 
protest of his Church and for the sufferers the 
tenderest sympathy. The love we owe our 
brother man warrants and compels us to plead 
for greater protection against accident and 
greater mercy and justice, even to care in old 
age, for the wounded and crippled from the 
industrial battlefield." 

Here, as everywhere, the fear that it will 
cost too much to do right, is a fear as foolish 
as it is wicked. The one cost which can be 
afforded under no circumstances is the present 
cost in life and limb. Justice to labor involves 
injustice to no one. There would be no in- 
justice to employers. The cost of such com- 
pensation would be shifted from the employers 
to society at large. Like any other expense 
common to all who are conducting a given in- 
dustry, this expense also enters into the costs 
of production and is finally paid by the public 
as an element in price. In other words, it is 



50 CHEAPNESS OF HUMAN LIFE 

essentially an indirect tax to be paid by the 
consumer. 

Yet even to the public at large, working- 
men's compensation would cost little or noth- 
ing in the end. For the immediate expense 
would be ultimately balanced by several econ- 
omies. First of all, a large proportion of 
the present number of injuries, illnesses, and 
deaths would then be averted by improved 
preventive measures. In consequence of this 
happy result there would follow ultimately a 
great reduction in present expenses of liability- 
insurance and damage-suits, with immediate 
saving to industry and ultimate saving to the 
public. Furthermore, public charities would 
be relieved of enormous charges made upon 
them for the support of the thousands now re- 
duced to dependency through our dangerous 
and unsanitary industries. In Chicago it was 
ascertained that 109 out of 1000 cases of 
destitution were due in whole or in part to 
some kind of industrial accident. Again, the 
industrial efficiency and social worth of thou- 
sands would become an increasing asset to 
society through coming generations as the re- 
sult of the abolition of the woman-labor, child- 
labor, dependency and delinquency of which our 
present system of non-compensation is a 
prolific source. 

Nor is there any grave danger that such 



CHEAPNESS OF HUMAN LIFE 51 

laws may drive away industries from the 
states which enact them to others which do 
not. As we have just seen, industry would 
thus be put to little, if any, net expense. 
Furthermore, actual experience shows that 
other labor laws, even when involving much 
immediate expense, have not driven away in- 
dustries from the states enacting them.-^^ In 
this regard it is hardly less than decisive that 
the German Empire, subject to strict and 
comprehensive compensation and insurance 
laws, has yet been conspicuous in its recent in- 
dustrial development in spite of the competi- 
tion of the world. Furthermore, our Ameri- 
can states are carefully forestalling the diffi- 
culty in question, first, by tentatively regulating 
the scale of legal compensation with regard to 
the admitted wastefulness of the present sys- 
tem and the probable economies of the new sys- 
tem; second, by co-operative legislation, framed 
and enacted after conference of the representa- 
tives of the several states, or by directly copy- 
ing one another's enactments. 

Christian men of to-day must remember the 
Priest and the Levite of old who passed by on 
the other side, — possibly not so much heart- 
less as busy men, probably engaged just then 
in "church-work." And Avhile these church- 
men hurried on unheeding, the great work of 
15 See G. L. Bolen: "Getting a Living," p. 597. 



52 CHEAPNESS OF HUiMAN LIFE 

the Church was left to a despised "outsider," 
who did it well. To-day humanity lies plun- 
dered and bleeding by the highway. God for- 
bid that we should pass by on the other side. 



VI 

WHAT CHURCH-MEN SHOULD KNOW 
ABOUT THE LABOR UNIONS 

The most noteworthy criticism of the labor 
unions ever published is probably the recent 
work of President Eliot entitled, "The Future 
of Trade-Unionism and Capitalism in a Demo- 
cracy." And yet President Eliot concedes 
therein that "the efforts which trade-unions 
have made to improve the conditions of em- 
ployment in all the chief industries which sup- 
port civilized society are so commendable that 
society at large ought to be patient with the 
false theories or bad practices which have im- 
paired or counteracted their work.'* ^ And 
George L. Bolen, a critic no less severe, char- 
acterizes unionism as a "great and noble 
movement for the upliftment of humanity" 
with "a long array of achievements that 
proved as beneficial to society as to its own ad- 
herents." ^ 

To enumerate some of the achievements for 
social welfare which command such commenda- 

1 Op. cit., p. 51. 

2 "Getting a Living," pp. 179, 288. 

53 



54 CHURCH-MEN SHOULD KNOW 

tion from the most uncompromising critics is 
the purpose of this chapter. For several rea- 
sons appreciation seems here and now more 
timely than criticism. First, because such 
criticisms are already familiar, perhaps too 
familiar. Again, because the social situation 
will be the more profitably discussed, not by ap- 
portioning blame, but by awarding honor 
wherever due and whenever possible. Fin- 
ally, because it is the right of any in- 
stitution to be judged by its fixed ideals 
and net results rather than by its in- 
cidental methods and occasional abuses ; other- 
wise, the banking system and monogamous 
marriage, even the Church and the State, as 
justly as the labor-union, would stand con- 
demned. We will do well indeed to heed the 
eloquent counsel of Bishop Mclntyre: "Judge 
the union by its best, not by its worst. Paul 
cried, with lifted hands in chains, 'Remember 
my bonds.' He could not do all he would. 
Labor is beset with bitter conditions. To 
fling censure is easy, and gelatinous es- 
says concocted from a denatured Bible are use- 
less." 3 

1. The organization of labor has elevated the 
general standard of living. 

The standard of living is that degree of 
3 See "The Methodist Review," March, 1912, p. 232. 



CHURCH-MEN SHOULD KNOW 55 

economic g-ood which a social class is able to 
maintain as the material basis of its life. 
"Beyond all controversy, that frightful de- 
terioration of the industrial classes which the 
large system of industry set in deadly opera- 
tion has been arrested, and the lot of the labor- 
ing man has been vastly improved during the 
last seventy-five years. . . . No such hor- 
rible living conditions can be found to-day in 
the great factory towns of Great Britain; 
even the submerged tenth are living far more 
decently now than the average mechanic was 
living then. Even Pittsburg, in all its misery, 
is a paradise compared with Manchester and 
Glasgow in the third and fourth decades of 
the nineteenth century. Many causes have 
wrought together to produce this improve- 
ment, but the students of social science agree 
in their judgment that the most efficient cause 
of that improvement has been the organiza- 
tion of labor." * 

This is unionism's noblest social service. 
More than that, it is the noblest possible ser- 
vice to social welfare. For the workingman's 
standard of living means nothing else than the 
effectiveness of his purpose to participate in 
the civilization and progress of humanity. 
"The rising standards of living are due to the 

* Washington Gladden in "The Outlook," March 4, 
1911, p. 50^. 



56 CHURCH-MEN SHOULD KNOW 

ideal which religion has taught us all to have 
of manhood and womanhood, wifehood and 
childhood." ^ The sociology of the times seems 
unanimous in the view that only as the stand- 
ard of living rises can civilized society be saved 
from the alternative disasters of general over- 
population on the one hand and the out- 
populating power of inferior stocks on the 
other. "The rosy glow thrown upon the 
future by the progress of the industrial arts 
proves but a false dawn unless the common 
people acquire new wants and raise the plane 
upon which they multiply." ^ 

^. The shortening of the labor-day, averag- 
ing in modern times at least three 
hours, is chiefly to the credit of the 
unions. 

To the workers this is more than an economic 
gain ; it is a spiritual gain. Again, it is 
more than a gain to the workers ; it is a 
gain to society at large. For it "has doubt- 
less been the main cause of the rise of 
British and American workmen in efficiency, 
intelligence, and capable citizenship — the 

5 Graham Taylor in "The Social Application of Re- 
ligion," p. 101. 

6E. A. Ross: "The Foundations of Sociology," p. 
580, ff. 



CHURCH-MEN SHOULD KNOW 57 

essential elements of strength in a nation." '^ 

3. Organized labor is one of the chief de- 
fenses of public health. 

Every over-worked and debilitated laborer is 
a ready transmitter of all the germ-diseases, 
and the unions, in their successes against ex- 
cessive hours and over-speeding, have actually 
been defending health and life for all of us. 
Their effective campaigns against tuberculosis, 
with such incidents as their hospital-homes for 
consumptives and the epoch-making achieve- 
ments of the cigar-makers' union in greatly 
reducing the abnormal prevalence of the "white 
plague" in that industry, is a matter of well- 
known and honorable record.^ The sanitary 
reforms of the New York and Chicago bake- 
shops, whereby the bread of millions has been 
cleansed from unspeakable filth and deadly 
germs, are praiseworthy beyond words to the 
unions which fought the good fight for all the 
people.^ Their relentless crusade against the 
tenement sweat-shop, the prolific breeding- 
place of consumption, scarlet fever and diph- 
theria, has probably saved first and last the 
lives of thousands who know little and care 
less about the labor-unions. 

7G. L. Bolen: "Getting a Living," p. 401 ff. and 746. 
Cf. The New Encyclopedia of Social Reform, p. 1526. 

8 See C. Stelzle: "The Church and Labor," p. 68-69. 

9 See "The Survey," June 18, 1910, p. 483 ff. 



58 CHURCH-MEN SHOULD KNOW 

^. The unions afford the chief protection 
against the exploitation of the labor of 
women and children. 

These abuses really amount to the present 
exhaustion of the future assets of society. 
And thus the labor union not only strives 
chivalrously for woman and child; it strives 
thus for the rights of posterity and even the 
possible permanency of civilization.-^^ 

5. Unionism is a safeguard against unemploy- 

ment and its social ill-consequences. 

By their service as employment bureaus, and 
again by their "out-of-work" benefits, the 
unions seem to render more effective service 
than any other agencies for the like purpose. 

6. The benefit funds of the unions are among 

the great benevolences of the age. 

Nearly all pay burial expenses of members 
and some provide homes or pensions for the 
aged and ill. In one year the Brotherhood 
of Locomotive Engineers paid $800,000 in 
death and accident benefits, ^^ and the unions 
affiliated with the American Federation of 
Labor more than four and a half millions in 

10 See "Social Ministry," (edited by H. F. Ward) p. 
158; C. SteMe: "The Church and Labor," p. 82; G. L. 
Bolen: "Getting a Living," p. 479. 

11 G. L. Bolen, op. cit., pp. 173-174. 



CHURCH-MEN SHOULD KNOW 59 

benefits of all kinds.^^ "The members of old 
unions seldom appear on the lists of recipients 
of alms and trade-unionism has come to be one 
of the chief bulwarks against pauperism."^^ 

7. Unionism often protects employers against 
unscrupulous competitors. 
In every industry there is likely to be a 
number of unprincipled competitors who, 
though usually a minority, are able to "flood 
the market" with cheap goods produced by 
under-paid or over-worked labor, sometimes 
driving their more conscientious competitors 
out of business. Their attitude menaces alike 
the interests of the other employers and all the 
employees in the trade concerned, and the 
trade-unions, by exacting just and humane 
terms from the unscrupulous, are the effective 
champions, not only of the employees, but of 
the better and the greater number of the em- 
ployers as well.^* Historic examples are 
afforded b}^ the strike of the New York gar- 
ment-workers in 1904,^^ the bake-shop regula- 
tions of 1910 in the same city,^^ the unionizing 
of the Illinois coal-miners in 1897,^^ and very 

12 W. A. White in "The Old Order Changeth." 

13 C. R. Henderson: "Social Elements," p. 179; Cf. 
C. Stelzle: "The Church and Labor," pp. 68-70. 

14 See J. G. Brooks: "The Social Unrest," p. 15. 

15 See McClure's Magazine, December, 1904, p. 138. 

16 "The Survey," June 18, 1910, p. 483 fF. 

17 G. L. Bolen: "Getting a Living," p. 731. 



60 CHURCH-MEN SHOULD KNOW 

impressively on the occasion when the ribbon 
manufacturers of Coventry contributed £16,- 
000 to assist the weavers' union in holding 
other competing employers to the union scale 
of wages. -^^ 

Unionism further benefits employers by in- 
creasing the efficiency of labor and consequently 
by increasing the quantity and improving the 
quality of the out-put. In spite of the un- 
deniable tendencies of rabid unionism to the 
contrary, union men usually know that in or- 
der to maintain they must also earn a high 
rate of wages ; that employers cannot in the 
long run pay more than it pays to pay. If 
the better terms of employment procured 
through the unions prove permanent, that is, 
if they do not thus exhaust the capital that 
affords employment, then it is evident that ''the 
rise in the standard of living has been accom- 
panied by at least an equal rise in the stand- 
ard of working." The pressure of unionism 
for higher wages also tends to the extended 
use of machinery and to the improvement of 
technical processes and industrial organiza- 
tion, while these results in turn require ever- 
increasing efficiency on the part of the in- 
dividual worker. It is to be noted that these 
benefits accrue not only to employees and their 
employers, but ultimately to the public as well. 

18 G. L. Bolen: "Getting a Living," p. 182. 



CHURCH-MEN SHOULD KNOW 61 

8. Trade-unionism is a main factor in popu- 
lar education. 

As declared by the resolutions of the Fed- 
eral Council of Churches: "By them (the un- 
ions) society at large is benefited ... in 
the educational influence of the multitudes 
who in the labor unions find their chief, some- 
times their only, intellectual stimulus," 

Unionism has been the chief educator of the 
co-operative man. The actual successes of the 
unions depend on the degree in which they de- 
velop in their members the co-operative vir- 
tues of fraternity, patience, discipline, "team- 
work," self-sacrifice and the collective exercise 
of sound judgment. As Shailer Mathews de- 
clares : "There is many a church which in point 
of general altruism and loyalty to its profes- 
sions of high purpose, could not endure a com- 
parison with the work of some labor unions." ^^ 
Hence it is no surprise to discover that co- 
operative enterprises flourish where trade-un- 
ionism has flourished and rarely anywhere 
else.2o 

In other ways also unionism has been an effec- 
tive school of citizenship. By their continual 
agitation for labor legislation, the unionists 
are compelled to think out a political program 

19 "The Church and the Changing Order," p. 125. 

20 See G. L. Bolen: "Getting a Living," pp. 88-89. 



62 CHURCH-MEN SHOULD KNOW 

which not only pleases themselves but will 
please the public sufficiently to procure its 
legal enactment and enforcement, and in so 
doing they must acquaint and relate themselves 
with the political institutions and conditions 
of the country. 

Again, their successes in procuring a hu- 
mane degree of leisure and a living wage make 
possible for the working classes the "time and 
strength and spirit to think" without which 
good citizenship is impossible, — for it is evi- 
dent that most men, if compelled to work 
twelve hours or more every day of the week 
and to live on meager supplies of the mere 
animal necessities, are likely to become either 
animals or anarchists in the end. Thus the 
union has promoted popular knowledge of poli- 
tics, economics and the social sciences. Its 
members, in attending to the union's affairs, to 
its large financial interests, to its general social 
policies, have been trained in business efficiency. 
It has taught them how to bargain for their 
wages, "perhaps the most useful to them of 
all earthly knowledge." In short, it has 
been the great popular teacher of "associated 
self-help, the main force in public movements." 
Such considerations fairly warrant the saying 
of William E. Gladstone that "trade unions 
are the bulwarks of modem democracies" ^^ and 

21 Quoted by G. L. Bolen: "Getting a Living," p. 191. 



CHURCH-MEN SHOULD KNOW 63 

Lyman Abbott's that "by training in habits of 
co-operation and combination unionism has 
laid the foundation of future perfected social 
democracy." ^^ 

9. The union is the greatest influence for the 

Americanizing of the immigrant, save 
only the public school. 

After enumerating certain particulars, Car- 
roll D. Wright declares: **It is doubtful if any 
other organization than a trade-union could 
accomplish these things. . . . Certain it 
is that no other organization is attempting to 
do this, at least not by amalgamation, which 
is the only way assimilation can be secured 
among the foreign elements." ^^ Mr. Wright 
further points out that it is through the union 
that the immigrant most often hears that he is 
not the victim of but a partner in our govern- 
ment and must do his part in making the part- 
nership beneficial to all. 

10. Unionism is an influence for law and or- 

der. 
It is true that the unions are not often 
thought of in this character and too often ap- 
pear in the contrary character. Nevertheless 
this very claim in their behalf can be established 

22 See "The Outlook," August 20, 1911, p. 881. 

23 U. S. Bureau of Labor, Bulletin No. 56, January, 
1905. 



64^ CHURCH-MEN SHOULD KNOW 

on good grounds. There are few, if any, laws 
on the statute-books more important to the 
public welfare than those relating to the in- 
dustrial employment of women and children, 
sweat-shop and tenement conditions, industrial 
safety and sanitation, and the observance of 
Sunday in industry and commerce. And it is 
well-known that the enforcement of these and 
kindred forms of social legislation, has its 
chief security in the unremitting vigilance of 
the labor unions. ^^ 

With regard to the industrial conflicts in 
which the unions engage, the disorders with 
which they are too often charged should in 
justice be offset by the active support of the 
law with which they are not often enough ac- 
corded their due credit. "For example, when 
funerals were picketed in Chicago the grew- 
some fact was heralded throughout the land. 
But when a little later in the same city, a local 
union fined one of its members for assaulting 
a non-union workman and furnished the wit- 
nesses to secure his conviction in a criminal 
court, the incident received only passing local 
attention and elsewhere was ignored. Again, 
when a union at Schenectady that had fallen 
under socialistic influence, expelled a member 
because he belonged to the militia, the widely 
published statement evoked severe and sweeping 

24 Cf. "The Survey," June 18, 1910, p. 488. 



CHURCH-MEN SHOULD KNOW 65 

criticisms of an attitude which was ascribed to 
unionism in general. But when, soon after- 
wards, the annual convention of garment 
workers by a large majority declared its sup- 
port of the militia, or when Mr. Gompers, in 
a trenchant article, defended the militia, daily 
journalism took no notice of the fact." ^^ 

A w^ell known Boston capitalist reminds us 
that "from the beginning labor has had to 
fight the enemy not only from without but from 
within as well, and this because, from the very 
nature of its cause, it has had to take in all 
kinds of working people, no matter whether 
they were fit or not."^^ As an inevitable re- 
sult of this inevitable condition the reckless 
revolutionary element sometimes comes to the 
front and the top in the unions. But we must 
remember that this is not the rule but the excep- 
tion. For in the unions, as everywhere, the 
men with cool heads and steady nerves tend 
to assume their natural leadership, and such 
men w^ell know that the interests of the union, 
as well as their own continued leadership, de- 
mand that the hot-heads and the fire-eaters be 
effectually restrained. Much current criticism 
of the unions seems to ignore the fact that the 

25 Report of the Executive Council of the National 
Civic Federation quoted by Adams and Sumner, Labor 
Problems, p. 211n. 

26 See "The Survey," Dec. 30, 1911, p. 1418. 



66 CHURCH-MEN SHOULD KNOW 

same disorderly and desperate men would still 
exist even if there were no unions, and with- 
out the unions would be far more dangerous 
than they are within the unions where they are 
associated with the wiser and better men who 
are usually in the majority. This noiseless 
but pervasive restraint is more effective than 
that of the police because it comes closer home. 
Sometimes, indeed, this restraint proves in- 
effectual, arson, dynamiting, or street-rioting 
ensues, the newspapers publish the horror, and 
we all know all about it. But at most times 
it is effectual, the newspapers publish nothing 
and the rest of us know nothing about it. 
When a million men merely behave themselves 
and compel their associates to do the same, 
that does not make a "story" for the papers, 
but one McNamara with a stick of dynamite 
always does. Without his union and the hope it 
begets, the wage-earner, given over to the mad 
anger of despair, would usually become a ter- 
rible recruit to the ever-swelling ranks of 
anarchy. "Take this fresh hope of better 
days through unionism from him and I would 
tremble for the commonwealth," writes Bishop 
Mclntyre; "let no black prejudice spawned in 
the dark ages choke down the lid on this safety- 
valve of aspiration lest the sliip of state be 
imperilled." ^^ 

2T See the Methodist Review, March, 1912, p. 228. 



CHURCH-MEN SHOULD KNOW 67 

11. Organized labor is an influence for 
temperance. 

Unionism makes for a higher standard of 
living. A higher standard of living in turn 
means better homes. And good homes are the 
sovereign remedy for saloons. For similar 
reasons, the shortening of the work-dav, due 
chiefly to unionism, has generally promoted 
temperate habits among workers. ^^ The 
Knights of Labor have always refused member- 
ship to employees of the liquor business. The 
stereotypers' union of New York fines members 
who come on duty drunk. The Brotherhood of 
Locomotive Engineers requires total abstinence 
of its members and all the railway brother- 
hoods are rigid in their temperance regula- 
tions.^^ In Great Britain there is a temper- 
ance society composed exclusively of walking 
delegates and other union officials, its object 
being "the promotion of total abstinence and 
the removal of trades' society meetings from 
licensed premises." Nearly every labor-mem- 
ber of Parliament belongs to it.^*^ A similar 
movement is now under way among labor 
leaders in this country and has promise of 
much influence and usefulness. In spite of the 
affiliation of the bar-tenders' union with the 

28 See G. L. Bolen: "Getting a Living," p. 412. 

29 See G. L. Bolen, op. cit., p. 189, 297. 

30 See C, Stelzle: "The Church and Labor," p. 76 flF. 



68 CHURCH-MEN SHOULD KNOW 

American Federation of Labor, the national 
officers of the latter have pronounced them- 
selves strongly against the saloon and are 
systematically endeavoring to procure for un- 
ions everywhere meeting places other than 
saloon-premises. The Federation in a recent 
national convention has refused to go on record 
against marked activity in no-license cam- 
paigns of its General Treasurer, Mr. John B. 
Lennon. 

12. Organized labor is a chief influence for 
international peace. 

Its adherents are everywhere well aware 
that the intolerable burdens of war and arma- 
ment fall chiefly upon the working classes. An 
English authority reports that "in Europe the 
general hope for peace is centered in the work 
done by labor organizations," adding, "we 
hope that as soon as these organizations 
achieve their efScienc^^, they will organize them- 
selves into international bodies to prevent 
war."^^ And hardly less than prophetic is 
Keir Hardie's prediction of "the time when 
an organized working class would take its 
place in the politics of the world by declaring 
that on the day on which a war was declared 
tools would be dropped and every wheel 

31 Harold Gorst, quoted in "The Christian Ministry 
and the Social Order," p. 293. 



CHURCH-MEN SHOULD KNOW 69 

stopped in every country affected by the 
war."22 

13. Unionism is to he credited with some re- 
ligious spirit. 

As it raises the standard of living, it sets 
men free from bondage to material things 
and so makes possible for them the things of 
the spirit. Labor, although estranged from 
the Church, is yet manifestly responsive to 
fraternal overtures from the Church. Best of 
all, workingmen everywhere revere the name 
and the lordship of Jesus. 

Surely organized labor has a long and hon- 
orable record of service rendered to the gen- 
eral welfare of mankind. By essential facts 
and forces such as these, not by questionable 
or even deplorable incidents, must Christian 
men appraise the labor movement and pro- 
nounce it a prime factor in progressive civiliza- 
tion. 

32 See "The Outlook," February 11, 1911, p. 325. 



VII 

WHAT WAGE-EARNERS SHOULD KNOW 
ABOUT THE CHURCH 

"How can I hate him? I know him," said 
Charles Lamb. Better: acquaintance is the 
way to good will. When church-men get bet- 
ter acquainted with the labor unions, and labor- 
ing-men with the churches, mutual esteem and 
fraternal co-operation, to the benefit of both, 
will ensue. And in the long run a benefit 
greater still will accrue to society at large. 

What churchmen should know about the la- 
bor unions, was the subject of the preceding 
chapter. It is now in order to consider, 
What laboring-men ought to know about the 
Church. If the reader is a laboring man, he 
is challenged to give the Church a square deal. 
If he is a churchman, he is charged to present 
the claims of the Church to laboring men and 
their unions whenever a hearing can be ob- 
tained. 

1, The church has created the moral senti- 
ment to which labor appeals and by 
which social service subsists. 

It is true that nearly all the gains of the 



WAGE-EARNERS SHOULD KNOW 71 

labor movement have been made on demand of 
the labor unions rather than of the churches. It 
is equally true that such demands would never 
have been accorded, nor even heard, apart 
from the social conscience which the churches 
have created. The unions have been able to 
do for the masses in America what could not 
have been done in any heathen country simply 
because we have churches in America. In the 
pre-Christian world the highest social thought 
was attained by Plato and Aristotle. Here 
is Plato's best word concerning labor: "Na- 
ture has made neither bootmakers nor black- 
smiths ; such occupations degrade the people 
engaged in them, miserable mercenaries ex- 
cluded by their very position from political 
rights." And here is Aristotle's : "In the state 
which is best governed the citizens must not 
lead the life of mechanics or tradesmen, for 
such a life is ignoble and inimical to vir- 
tue." ^ The difference between the world of 
that and the world of this day simply registers 
the fact that in the meantime the Church has 
had its word to say. As Professor Ely writes : 
"Apart from! Christ the natural tendency is 
to come back to the standpoint of the Greeks 
and despise the masses." ^ And Professor 
Ross says : "What keeps the Church most alive 

iSee G. Hodges: "Faith and Social Service," p. 58. 
2 See G. L. Bolen: "Getting a Living," p. 648. 



72 WAGE-EARNERS SHOULD KNOW 

is its power to fit human beings for harmonious 
social life. It is, in the last analysis, the re- 
pository of certain related ideas, convictions, 
symbols, and appeals which have more efficacy 
in socializing the human heart than any other 
group of influences known to Western Ci\dliza- 
tion." ^ And Professor Dewey says : "The 
highest product of the interest of man in man 
is the Church." ^ 

2. The church through the course of history 
has always been a main factor in the 
upliftment of the masses. 

What is the most democratic fact of history.? 
Not a primitive folk-moot in a North German 
forest, nor the red-handed Jacquerie of France, 
nor Napoleon crowned as the people's Em- 
peror, but the fact that a Carpenter is wor- 
shiped as God by the nations of the earth, 
and this is the achievement of the Church. 
And the teaching of the Carpenter, perpet- 
uated by the Church, is everywhere recognized 
as the divine charter for the worth and rights 
of the common people. 

The greatest single institution in the inter- 
est of labor is the weekly rest day "secured for 
the toilers of Christendom by the very charter 
of the Church and defended on their behalf by 

3 See "The Outlook," August 28, 1897. 

4 "Psychology," p. 343. 



WAGE-EARNERS SHOULD KNOW 73 

it through the centuries," — the earliest, most 
enduring, and most beneficent labor legisla- 
tion known to history. "The Sabbath stood 
for the idea that man belonged to God, and 
that the lowliest man should be a man of leisure 
on that day, owing his time to nobody but God. 
The Council of Wessex (691 A. D.)"' legislated 
that if a slave was forced by his master to 
work on the Sabbath, he was to be free. The 
slave is God's man on that day ; and God warns 
the mighty not to trespass on his domain."^ 

Again it is never to be forgotten that the 
great stream of philanthropy, which partly 
compensates the inequalities of society, has its 
perennial source in the influence of the Church. 
And not only the impulse to help the less 
favored, but likewise the upward aspirations 
of the less favored themselves have arisen from 
the same inexhaustible source. In the words 
of Graham Taylor: "The Christian evangel 
has long held the ideal overhead and the 
dynamic within the heart which has inspired a 
divine discontent. Every now and then the 
gospel strikes the earth under the feet of the 
common man, and he rises up to be counted as 
one." ^ All great movements for popular wel- 
fare are typified, as to their essential charac- 
ter, by such popular uprisings as those of the 

5 H. L. Nash: "The Genesis of the Social Conscience." 

6 See "The Social Application of Religion," pp. 93-94. 



74 WAGE-EARNERS SHOULD KNOW 

German peasantry in the sixteenth century and 
of the laborers of England following the min- 
istry of John WyclifFe, both of which asserted 
the rights of the masses in terms of the gospel 
which came to them through the Church. To 
reply that the organized Church does not im- 
mediately and everywhere enlist itself in such 
movements, is only to cite the irrelevant fact 
that whenever truth is newly discovered it is 
not discovered by everybody all at once; there 
must always be seers and pioneers. And the 
Church does infinitely more for the masses than 
any other institution, even should we admit 
that it does no more than perpetuate the 
sources from which alone the seers and pioneers 
of humanity must ever renew their vision and 
their strength. 

The abolition of slavery was the greatest of 
all labor movements. And the common scoff 
that the Church did not abolish slavery misses 
its point. The Golden Rule abolished slavery. 
And the Church has carried the Golden Rule 
down the centuries and around the world. Ac- 
cording to an authority so impartial as Ben- 
jamin Kidd, slavery was abolished in Europe, 
where formerly universal, largely through the 
quiet and all but forgotten persuasions of 
priests and prelates in the middle ages.^ And 
Carroll D. Wright attributes its final abolition 
7 See "Western Civilization." 



WAGE-EARNERS SHOULD KNOW 75 

throughout the British Empire to the unmis- 
takable influence of the Wesleyan revival.^ It 
is well-known that the emancipation-crusade 
of William Wilberforce was the direct con- 
sequence of his evangelical conversion.^ 

3. Laboring men should take account of the 
social movement in the Church to-day. 

Nothing is at present so engaging the heart 
and the hands of the Church. It is too true 
that the Church has done far less than it ought 
for the social welfare in general and for labor 
in particular; but it is also true that no critics 
of the Church are more unsparing in this re- 
gard than those of its own membership. And 
the Church at large, so far from being hostile, 
or even indifferent to such criticism, welcomes 
and lays it to heart. When an institution 
regularly generates and responds to self- 
criticism it manifests a prime qualification of 
social fitness and survival. The response of 
the Church to social needs is evidenced in the 
departments of labor and social service au- 
thorized by nearly all of the denominations, 
the observance of Labor Sunday and the identi- 
fication of many ministers with the unions or 
their interests, the increasing concern of the 
churches for labor-legislation, the official dec- 

8 See G. L. Bolen: "Getting a Living," p. 649. 

» See Encyclopaedia Britannica, Art. "Wilberforce." 



76 WAGE-EARNERS SHOULD KNOW 

larations of the chief denominations committing 
them to the labor movement, and especially the 
like declaration of the Federal Council of the 
Churches and the work of its Social Service 
Commission, whereby the Protestantism of 
America is committed with authority to a social 
creed and a social program. Beyond all this, 
it is to be remembered that the larger part of 
the social work of the Church is that which its 
members are doing as individuals in pursuance 
of its teachings. The help which the Church 
renders the cause of labor is not measured by 
the visible activity of its organization or 
officials, but by the degree in which all who ren- 
der any service are actuated by the Christian 
spirit and motives which the Church inculcates. 
When laboring men complain that our reso- 
lutions and sermons are "mere talk" and that 
the churches ought to "do something," their 
complaint is a mingling of wisdom with unwis- 
dom. We may properly require them to ob- 
serve that "talk" in the sense of instruction, 
reproof and persuasion, is not to be disparaged ; 
that in this sense it is at once the chief func- 
tion of the Church and a chief force in all 
human affairs, in labor unions for instance; 
that the right kind of "talking" is "doing." 
Again they should consider that the Church 
must never do more than persuade men; that 
its attempt to coerce men has been its greatest 



WAGE-EARNERS SHOULD KNOW 77 

historic error. Yet we cannot demand that 
such critics be entirely satisfied with the 
Church. Our preachings and resolutions, our 
teachings and testimony, ought to be more 
timely, more practical, more human, more pro- 
phetic. As organizations the churches ought 
to "talk," not less but better, and also "do" 
many more things than now. But when all is 
said and done, the talking will have led to the 
doing. i 

4. Laboring men should not under-estimate 
the democratic constituency and spirit 
of the church. 

The Church is still essentially the Church of 
the people. I speak of the rule, not the ex- 
ception. There are exceptions, — a few city 
churches which are conspicuous because ex- 
ceptional, and exceptional because so few in 
comparison to the tens of thousands of humble 
churches composed of humble people. 

It is true that the operations of the Church 
are so extended and complicated as to require 
business ability of the highest order and 
financial resources in large amounts. Never- 
theless the attempts of "big business" and 
"big money" to take advantage of these re- 
quirements are apparently infrequent and in 
certain instances the repudiation of such at- 
tempts has been sharp and conclusive. The 



78 WAGE-EARNERS SHOULD KNOW 

great business enterprises of the churches are 
largely conducted by men who have come from 
humble stations in life and are now rendering 
great services at small salaries. And the ex- 
penses are paid, not chiefly by the few large 
gifts of the rich, but by the many small gifts 
of the poor. Nor are all the great churches in 
great cities dominated by "predatory wealth." 
Among the most eminent champions of labor 
and of social reform are some of the distin- 
guished city pastors of every denomination. 

5. Laborers should recognize the free minis^ 
t ration and open fellowship of the 
churches. 

In an earHer chapter it was frankly ac- 
knowledged that snobbery is the manifest sin 
of some churches. Nevertheless I know of 
more than a few churches where this suspicion 
is due to misunderstanding entirely. Let 
laborers who demand justice for themselves be 
sure to accord it to the Church. 

It ought to be more generally recognized 
that the Church is the one great social institu- 
tion sustained at great expense by voluntary 
gifts and offering its ministrations without 
charge to all the people. Furthermore, "un- 
like the fraternal orders, with which it is un- 
favorably compared, the Church welcomes all 
grades of people, not having the black-ball 



WAGE-EARNERS SHOULD KNOW 79 

method of restricting membership." There- 
fore church-men may rightly address wage- 
earners in this wise: The Church needs you. 
You need the Church. Meantime if you are 
not entirely pleased with the Church, remember 
that the Church isn't entirely pleased with it- 
self. Don't grumble, but lend a hand. There 
are enough of you to make the Church what- 
ever you want it to be, and you can take pos- 
session any day you please. The door to 
membership is open, — why not all come in at 
once, — in the fear of God, seeking pardon for 
sin, justice for society, fellowship with human- 
ity ? What a vision ! 



VIII 

THE SOCIAL CREED OF THE CHURCH 

In 1908 the Federal Council of the Churches 
of Christ, officially representing thirty-three de- 
nominations of American Protestantism, promul- 
gated a declaration which has been generally 
received as "the social creed of the Church." 
It should be distinctly recognized that this 
august body was commissioned with authority 
competent to commit to its utterances the par- 
ticipating denominations collectively. But 
further, the same denominations, by their own 
official utterances, have committed themselves 
severally to the same principles. For the his- 
toric declaration of the Federal Council was 
preceded by an almost identical utterance of 
the Methodist Episcopal Church and was fol- 
lowed by equivalent utterances on the part of 
nearly all the Protestant denominations. 
With a view to defining the position of the 
Church as to the labor movement, I will now 
quote in order, commenting on each, the social 
principles for which, by their own avowal, "the 
churches must stand." 

1. "For equal rights and complete justice for 
all men in all stations of life." 
80 



SOCIAL CREED OF THE CHURCH 81 

Here is a two-fold demand, namely, for 
equality and for justice, each in the Christian 
sense. When Christ taught all men, without 
respect of person, to say "Our Father," He 
put them on an equal level of worth in relation 
to God. So far as human relations put men 
on unequal levels of worth, the social system 
becomes unchristian and ungodly. "Equal 
rights for all men in all stations of life" means 
equalit}" of opportunity, not equality of pos- 
sessions, and universality of rights, not uni- 
formity of station. Not the equal capacities 
of all men, but the equal right of all to make 
the most of their unequal capacities, is as- 
serted. Hence all economic combinations and 
all social conditions which limit the oppor- 
tunity of any man or hinder him from realiz- 
ing any of the proper ends of his being, are 
contrary to the spirit of Jesus and the law of 
His kingdom. And social justice, no less than 
private morality, must be the uncompromising 
demand of the Church if it is to be worthy of 
its Master's name. 

^. ^^For the right of all men to the oppor- 
tunity for self -maintenance, a right 
ever to he wisely and strongly safe- 
guarded against encroachments of every 
kind. For the right of worK-ers to some 
protection against the hardships often 



82 SOCIAL CREED OF THE CHURCH 

resulting from the swift crises of in- 
dustrial change.'' 
This language seems fairly to commit the 
Church to the epoch-making doctrine of "the 
right to labor." We may not be committed to 
all the alleged implications of that doctrine; to 
be committed to its admitted implications is 
sufficiently revolutionary. The right to labor 
is necessary to the right to live, and should be 
supported, not by barren permission, but by 
adequate legal enactments and social institu- 
tions. Whether or not the means to this end 
are now apparent, the end itself should be 
recognized as a moral imperative and the means 
should be diligently sought and employed. 
But "he that will not work, neither shall he 
eat." Voluntary and involuntary idleness are 
alike demoralizing. Their abolition should be 
the accepted work of all Christian nations. 
Against this principle Goldwin Smith thus ar- 
gues : "Nor can the right to employment be 
asserted when no employment offers, in the 
case of an artisan any more than in that of a 
lawyer for whom there are no clients, or a phy- 
sician for whom there are no patients." ^ This 
assumes wrongly that the artisan's right to 
employment means the right to earn the special 
wage-rate incident to his special skill in his 
trade. The right really claimed is rather the 
1 "Labour and Capital," p. 9. 



SOCIAL CREED OF THE CHURCH 83 

simple right to a living wage, which belongs 
unconditionally to the artisan and the profes- 
sional man alike on the simple ground that they 
have a right to live, and is a very different mat- 
ter from the exceptional wage paid for their ex- 
ceptional abilities, which becomes their right 
only on condition that somebody promiises to 
pay it. 

3. "For the principal of conciliation and ar- 
bitration in industrial dissensions.'' 
In such dissensions the general public is al- 
ways a party in interest, sometimes the chief 
party in interest. The interests of the im- 
mediate disputants should ever be amenable to 
this larger social interest. Hence the public 
should always reserv^e, and when necessary ex- 
ercise, the right to intervene in its own behalf, 
especially when transportation or other public 
services, or such necessities of life as fuel or 
foodstuffs, are involved, and whenever pub- 
lic peace and order are menaced. While 
such intervention should be primarily con- 
ciliatory and persuasive, jet in defense of 
public interests it should be potentially deci- 
sive on occasions of great social emergency. 

^. ''For the protection of the worker from 
dangerous machinery, occupational dis- 
ease, injuries and mortality.'' 
An earlier chapter has been given to this 



84 SOCIAL CREED OF THE CHURCH 

subject. The following conclusions may be 
here re-stated. The prevention of these evils 
should be secured by every available precau- 
tion and safeguard. When not preventable, 
they should be regarded as incidental to the 
economic progress of society, and as such 
should be borne, as far as possible, by society 
at large rather than by the wage-earner, his 
family, or his social class. With a view to pre- 
vention and compensation alike, the Church and 
Christian men should earnestly promote the due 
reformation of industrial processes and cus- 
toms and the enactment of effective legislation 
in this regard. This course is called for not 
only in justice to the working class, but in de- 
fense of the social interests which now suffer 
through the disintegration of family life, the 
untimely labor of children and women, the in- 
capacity and consequent pauperism, and the 
race degeneracy, all so largely due to the need- 
less or uncompensated accidents and diseases 
of modern industry. 

5. ''For the abolition of child-lahor.'^ 

The sacred rights of childhood are the rights 
to home, health, play and education. Chris- 
tian citizens are therefore called upon to use 
all influences for the enactment and enforce- 
ment of laws that will prevent the employment 
of children at an undue age, during excessive 



SOCIAL CREED OF THE CHURCH 85 

hours or under any condition detrimental to 
health, happiness, efficiency or character. 
Every state should also maintain a system of 
free, compulsory and adequate education, such 
system being so co-ordinated with the code 
affecting child-labor that their operation shall 
be mutually supplementary and together se- 
cure childhood from ignorance on the one hand 
and habitual idleness on the other. Thus the 
interests of childhood, of labor, of the common 
wealth and of posterity will be alike conserved. 

6. "For such regulation of the condition of 
labor for women as shall safeguard the 
physical and moral health of the com- 
munity.^' 

The Supreme Court of the United States has 
latelj^ declared that such regulation should be 
"imposed not solely for her benefit but also 
largely for the benefit of all." The health, 
culture and character of woman, involving her 
qualification for good motherhood, whether 
physical, mental or moral, are possibly the most 
valuable assets of the human race. The in- 
dustrial employment of women should be 
limited in respect to the number of working 
hours per day and the number of working days 
per month, and in all respects necessary to pro- 
tect the woman-worker and the social interests 
involved in her welfare. 



86 SOCIAL CREED OF THE CHURCH 

7. '''For the suppression of the sweating sys- 

tem ^ 

Piece-work in the tenement is the prolific 
source of the miseries, diseases and vices of the 
city poor. Low wages, long hours, child-labor, 
abnormal thirst, foul air, organic and inor- 
ganic filth, under-feeding, over-crowding, the 
breeding and broad-casting of tuberculosis, 
scarlet fever and all manner of germ-diseases ; 
the break-up of the family and the out-break 
of anarchy, are some of the by-products of the 
sweating system. The Church ought to be the 
eager rival of the labor-union in reaching and 
removing this crime against civilization. 

8. ''For the gradual and reasonable reduc- 

tion of the hours of labor to the lowest 
practical point, and for that degree of 
leisure for all which is the condition of 
the highest human life." 

The reasonable reduction of labor-time is not 
to be regarded as a concession, to indolence but 
as a contribution to the health, culture and 
domestic integrity of the masses. The self-re- 
spect of civilized communities demands the uni- 
versal abolition of the twelve-hour day except 
under pressure of unavoidable emergency. 
Every successful reduction of the labor-day, 
when not accompanied by a; reduction of wages 



SOCIAL CREED OF THE CHURCH 87 

or of product, is to be viewed as a social 
gain. 

9. "For the release from employment one day 

in seven.'' 

This demand is sanctioned by physical, 
economic and divine laws. The Social Service 
Commission of the Federated Churches has since 
defined the practical application of this doc- 
trine as follows: "(a) One day of rest for 
every six days of work ; (b) This day of rest, 
wherever possible, to be made the Lord's Day ; 
(c) The pay of every worker for six days of 
work to be made sufficient for the needs of 
seven da^^s of living." 

10. "For a living-wage as a minimum vn 

every industry.'' 

The living wage cannot be defined in terms 
of money. Nevertheless it is a definite de- 
mand. It is such a wage-rate as will maintain 
in life and health a family of average number, 
affording elementary education to the children 
and due provision for sickness and old age, and 
not requiring wage-labor on the part of the 
wife and mother, nor of young children. The 
social and moral value of a living-wage will be 
manifest in betterment of family life, sexual 
morality, public health, industrial efficiency, 
general culture and good citizenship. 



88 SOCIAL CREED OF THE CHURCH 

11. ''For the highest wage that each industry 

can afford and for the most equitable 
division of products of industry that 
can ultimately he devised.'' 

The common product should be distributed 
according to the following principles: (1) No 
man should receive less than a living wage. 
(2) No man should receive more than he pro- 
duces or more than a fair equivalent for a ser- 
vice rendered. (S) The general increase of 
wealth should be accompanied by a proportion- 
ate increase of wages. In a Christian society 
the actual distribution of wealth should be con- 
stantly challenged by, and as far as possible 
governed by, these conditions. To this end in- 
dustry and commerce must morally and legally 
be purged of monopoly, exploitation and 
special privilege. 

12. ''For suitable provision for the old age 

of the workers and for those incapacit- 
ated by injury.'* 

Old age in almshouse corners flung is a re- 
proach to civilization. In years of strength a 
man has but the right to make a living, but in 
old age he has a right to a living. "Suitable 
provision for old age" must be accorded to men, 
not as charity, but justice. This is now more 
than the testimony of the Church or the clamor 
of the radical; it is the enacted law of the 



SOCIAL CREED OF THE CHURCH 89 

world's mightiest empire. And "suitable pro- 
vision for those incapacitated by injury" is no 
longer to be contingent on the demonstrable 
negligence of employers and limited b}^ the 
costs and uncertainties of litigation, but is to 
be automatic and assured, presumptively evi- 
denced by the mere fact of the injury, and ac- 
corded not as a gratuity but as a right. Since 
this testimony of the Church was delivered, and 
we trust in some measure on account of it, 
eleven American states have embodied its prin- 
ciple in statute law and it is probable that 
practically all will do so in the early future. 

13. ''For the abatement of poverty," 

When Henry George declared that poverty 
could and must be abolished there were few to 
treat him seriously. To-day the charity ex- 
perts and the sociologists are all but unani- 
mous in the deliberate judgment that involun- 
tary poverty is a preventable evil. The faith 
of the churches should be no less. True it is 
said, "the poor ye have always," but not, 
''ought to have." And it is also said, "Seek ye 
first the kingdom and all these things, (life's 
material conditions), shall be added unto you." 
And that promise will yet be literally fulfilled 
when we seek the kingdom socially as well as 
individually. 

The supreme act of Christian faith in our 



90 SOCIAL CREED OF THE CHURCH 

generation is the belief that the industrial 
world can indeed be Christianized and the reso- 
lution that it shall be done. That such a faith 
can be held and make headway amid the reg- 
nant selfishness, injustice and cruelty of the 
times is no less than the modern manifestation 
of the mind of Christ and the unfading 
splendor of the Apocalypse. May the men of 
Christ's Church be not disobedient unto the 
heavenly vision ! 



IX 

SOCIALISM 

The most significant outgrowth of the mod- 
ern labor movement is Socialism. In its fun- 
damental criticism of the present social order, 
in its exalted vision of the future social order, 
and in its living faith in that vision. Socialism 
ranks next to Christianity itself among the 
idealisms of history. No study could be more 
timely, whether for Socialist, Labor-unionist 
or Christian, than the study of Socialism in its 
relations with the labor movement and Chris- 
tianity. 

1. SOCIALISM ITSELF 

In these days one is likely to be bluntly 
asked, "Do you believe in Socialism?" The an- 
swer is at once as difficult and as easy as though 
the question had been, "Do you believe in re- 
ligion?" For just as religion may mean any- 
thing from fetichism to "the mind that was 
in Christ Jesus," so Socialism may mean any- 
thing from "the red fool-fury of the Seine" to 
the Holy City of the Apocalypse. The many 
and varied Socialisms may be classified under 

four types. First, Ideal Socialism, which may 
91 



9^ SOCIALISM 

mean merely the general prevalence of the so- 
cial spirit — of fraternity and service. Second, 
Cooperative Socialism, which seeks all ways to 
replace competition with cooperation through- 
out the economic realm. -"^ Third, Evolutionary 
Socialism, which proposes the gradual and ex- 
perimental extension of state-action, with the 
complete cooperative commonwealth as the fixed 
but remote ideal. Fourth, Revolutionary So- 
cialism, which proposes the immediate estab- 
lishment of the cooperative commonwealth as 
a substitute for our entire system of competi- 
tive industry and private ownership of land 
and large capital. Revolutionary Socialism is 
not necessarily a program of disorder and dy- 
namite; its representative programs are 
strictly political and pacific. 

Whether certain of these four types are en- 
titled to thq name of Socialism is sometimes 
denied both by adherents and opponents, and 
yet all these types have been so named and 
have so named themselves. To avoid confu- 
sion, the present discussion will be confined to 
the third, the evolutionary type, and without 
further explanation it may be assumed that 
the word "Socialism" will be here used with 
that reference. In this sense it is well defined 
by the late Edmond Kelley as "the theory that 
the production, transportation, and distribu- 
iSee T. Kirkup: "History of Socialism," pp. 400-403. 



SOCIALISM 93 

tion of the necessities of life can to a certain 
extent to-day, slowly to a larger degree, and 
perhaps eventually altogether, be best under- 
taken by the collective action of the city or 
state through the substitution of cooperation 
for competition, and social for self-interest." ^ 
Thus we eliminate from the present discussion 
many points of controversy. In this sense, for 
instance. Socialism is not artificial nor "con- 
trary to nature," but, as truly as Individualism, 
is an original factor in nature, as seen in the 
"collectivism" of the ant-hill and the bee-hive.^ 
Nor is such Socialism altogether visionary and 
untried. It is even now the operative principle 
of the family, the school and the church, and 
even in the political state is exemplified by our 
highways, parks, water-works, postal-system, 
and all those colossal properties involved in the 
present conservation problem. It was general 
in primitive society and generic in primitive 
Christianity.^ 

Nor does Socialism propose altogether to 
abolish private property. Goods for consump- 
tion would, of course, remain the private prop- 
erty of the consumers. Goods for production, 
(that is, capital), might be either private or 

2 "Individualism and Collectivism," p. 4. 
3Cf. E. Kelley: Op. cit., p. 4. 

4 See W. Rauschenbusch : "Christianity and the Social 
Crisis," pp. 388-393 and 413-414. 



94* SOCIALISM 

common property, according to whether they 
are for private use or for common use. That 
is, the carpenter's saw or the artist's pencil 
might be private property, but a railroad or 
a factory would be public property. Reason- 
able Socialists would probably say that a man 
might properly own any kind of property ex- 
cept such as gives him control over other 
men's living; property of the latter kind 
should be owned by all men in common. In a 
word, the choice is not between Individualism 
and Socialism as mutually exclusive, but just as 
Individualism now is largely socialistic, so 
would Socialism then be largely individualistic. 
Socialism also disclaims any menace to the 
individuality of personal character. It is true 
indeed that in the lower industrial processes 
which satisfy those physical needs in which in- 
dividuals are nearest alike, work would then be 
done by routine and the workers would be 
regimented. But this kind of work, accord- 
ing to the socialistic exposition, would thus be 
reduced to the minimum, and this done, all the 
workers would still have abundant time and 
vitality for those higher pursuits in which men 
exercise their choices and develop their indi- 
vidualities. Says John A. Hobson : "In a word, 
the highest division of labor has not yet been 
attained, — that which will apportion machin- 
ery to the collective supply of the routine 



SOCIALISM 95 

needs of life, and art to the individual supply 
of the individual needs. In this way alone can 
society obtain the full use of the labor-saving 
character of machinery, minimizing the amount 
of human exertion engaged in tending machin- 
ery and maximizing the amount engaged in 
the free and interesting occupations." ^ Thus 
Socialism proposes that individuality shall 
have for its security, no longer the "special 
privilege" of the few, but "equality of oppor- 
tunity" for everyone. 

2. SOCIALISM AND THE LABOR MOVEMENT 

In its fundamental character the labor move- 
ment is more than a strife for higher pay and 
shorter hours. It is the progress of industrial 
democracy, and its consummation will come 
when the economic order, as well as the political 
government, shall be "of the people, for the 
people, and by the people." Inasmuch as 
trade-unionism is a fighting force for obtain- 
ing specific economic gains to labor, it can 
never be adequate to the fulfillment of the labor 
movement in its higher ideals of universal 
democracy, justice, fraternity and peace. 
Socialism is the collective name for these ideals. 

Socialists maintain that the laboring-class, 
no matter how well "unionized," is always at 
a disadvantage in its present struggle with 

5 "The Evolution of Modern Capitalism." 



96 SOCIALISM 

capital. Hunger forever fights against the 
class that lives by its labor only, and for the 
class that lives by capital; for capital is but 
another name for the opportunity to labor and 
live. Hence, "Whatever terms organized 
labor may succeed in winning are always tem- 
porary and insecure, like the hold which a 
wrestler gets on the body of his antagonist. 
Moreover ... it has to wrestle on its 
knees with a foeman who is on his feet." ^ 
Socialism proposes that no class nor man shall 
hold such an advantage over others, but that 
social capital shall be held in common for the 
common good. 

Socialists maintain, again, that trade-union- 
ism is inadequate because it implies the con- 
tinued division of society into hostile classes, — 
capitalists and wage- workers. As a war-meas- 
ure unionism serves the higher ends of the 
labor movement in the same imperfect way that 
an efficient army serves the true welfare of a 
nation. Hence Socialism proposes that all 
laborers become also capitalists, and all 
capitalists become laborers, and so that the in- 
dustrial war shall end in the fusion of the war- 
ring classes. 

Socialists further maintain that unionism is 
no remedy for monopoly. The tendency to 
monopoly is one of the most ominous phe- 

6 W. Rauschenbusch : Op. cit., p. 407. 



SOCIALISM 97 

nomena of the time and the power thus de- 
veloped is probably the greatest power ever 
exerted by men over their fellowmen. Were 
this power to be transferred from the directors 
of some great corporation to the executive com- 
mittee of some great labor union, or to be held 
jointly by both, the interests of society would 
be no more secure than at present ; on the lat- 
ter supposition probably less so, since the most 
powerful monopolies even now seem to be those 
in which there is apparent collusion between 
the monopolistic management and its unionized 
employees/ Hence Socialism proposes that 
the whole public be admitted into the combina- 
tion ; in other words that society become its 
own monopolist. 

To set labor free from the advantages of 
capital in our present industrial war, to end 
the industrial war itself, to provide that 
monopoly shall accrue to the public good in- 
stead of private gain, — to achieve these ends 
would at once fulfill the labor movement and 
inaugurate the socialistic state. 

3. SOCIALISM AND CHRISTIANITY 

Whatever disagreement may be asserted be- 
tween Socialism and Christianity, it can hardly 
be denied that they agree in their motive and 
in their aim. For the common motive of 

7Cf. J. A. Hobson: "The Evolution of Modern 
Capitalism," p. 358. 



98 SOCIALISM 

Christianity and Socialism is conscientious con- 
cern for the injustices and cruelties of the pres- 
ent social order. And the common aim of 
Christianity and Socialism is the perfection of 
the social order. 

With agreement as to motive and aim, the 
only possible disagreements would be as to 
methods. Many Socialists there are who pro- 
fess to repudiate with hatred and scorn, not only 
certain! sects, creeds and dogmas, but Chris- 
tianity itself. Many Christians there are who 
profess to repudiate with equal hatred and 
scorn, not only certain socialistic programs, 
platforms and propositions, but Socialism it- 
self. An increasing number, among Socialists 
and Christians alike, are moved by the convic- 
tion that socialistic schemes, apart from the 
divine vitality of Christianity, will be ever inert 
and sterile, while Christian principles, apart 
from their application to the human realities 
of society, are perverted from their divine pur- 
pose. Hence, the demand that, in addition to 
the common motive and common aim of 
Socialism and Christianity, we now find such 
common methods as shall make complete an 
adequate and operative system of Christian 
Socialism. 

To this end it will not be necessary for either 
party to champion every theory or proposal 
which may call itself by the name of Chris- 



SOCIALISM 99 

tianity or the name of Socialism. But it will 
be necessary for all concerned to understand 
one another better than at present. Chris- 
tian men must give unprejudiced hearing to 
the cause of the Socialists and must invite re- 
ciprocal candor toward the cause of Christ. 
The Christian must thankfully honor the 
Socialist's noble faith that the brotherhood of 
man can really be made to work. The Social- 
ist must thankfully honor the Christian's faith 
that the Fatherhood of God will make it work. 
The Christian must unlearn his notion that So- 
cialism proposes nothing but social conflagra- 
tion in this world. The Socialist must unlearn 
his notion that Christianity proposes nothing 
but insurance against spiritual conflagration 
in the world to come. Each must recognize 
in the other the witness of an exalted vision. 
Each must recognize in the other's vision his 
own from another angle. And finally both 
must seek the ways of working together in or- 
der that their visions at last may be embodied 
in the fact and substance of that co-operative 
commonwealth which will also be the new 
Jerusalem out of Heaven from God. 



X 

WHAT CHRISTIAN MEN SHOULD DO 

"Christianity and the Labor Movement" is 
much more than a subject for thought. It is a 
call for action. As in the sacred story, so it is 
to-day: "While Peter thought on the vision, 
the Spirit said, Behold, three men seek thee;" 
after the vision, God's call to human service. 
And the book that tells the story is rightly 
called the book of Acts. And so, we now con- 
clude these studies of the labor movement with 
the question. What to do? and with the answer 
in the motto of the Wesleyan Union for Social 
Service, — "See and Serve." 

First, Christian men must see. It is no le^^ 
than unchristian for us to act on prejudiced 
or partial views of the labor movement. Chris- 
tian men should give to its study much of the 
same diligent attention which' they apply to 
vital problems of their private business ; for 
the King's business cannot be less vital. 

One's attitude of mind is the first factor in a 
true understanding. A distinguished leader of 
the Church-brotherhood movement says with 
too much truth that "the average Church-man 

has been inclined to view the labor union merely 
100 



WHAT CHRISTIANS SHOULD DO 101 

as an organization of malcontents whose par- 
ticular purpose it is to 'run the business of 
the employer,' to declare strikes, to commit acts 
of violence and to demand higher wages." ^ 
The Christian whose social environment is not 
that of the working-class, or he who has had 
some exasperating experience in dealing with 
that class, will confess to nothing worse than 
human nature in frankly recognizing that he 
probably has prejudices which he ought 
promptly to detect and dispel. He must 
recognize at the least that unionism has come 
to stay; that the present social order makes 
it inevitable. He should also recognize that 
the way to bring unionism to its highest pos- 
sibilities of good is to meet it with respect, 
candor and Christian fraternity. One who is 
a leader in the church and in the union says 
it is too generally true that union-men have 
formed the habit of anticipating little else than 
harsh and unintelligent criticism from church- 
men. This, of course, tends to react by pro- 
voking on the part of the unionists the very 
perversities which have first been imputed to 
them. On the other hand, according to a 
familiar trait in all men, an imputed virtue 
tends to become an imparted virtue. Hence 
Christian men by manifest good-will can do 

iW. B. Patterson: "Modern Church Brotherhoods," p. 
220. 



102 WHAT CHRISTIANS SHOULD DO 

much to elicit reciprocal good-will. And good- 
will is prerequisite to a true understanding of 
the present social situation. To know the 
social problem we must know the men involved, 
and to know them we must first honor and love 
them. 

The critical necessity of such an under- 
standing appears when we consider that there 
are some sixteen millions of our citizens, half 
at least being in the churches, who must be 
the final arbitrators of the labor movement, the 
gravest responsibility which ever has been laid 
upon public conscience and judgment in any 
land. And it is not the unionist alone who 
fears that church-men are not yet competent 
to understand and judge the labor-movement. 
An accredited sociologist lately said: "It is a 
question in my mind whether those sixteen 
millions will serve as impartial arbitrators. 
In my opinion a good many of us who are now 
so solicitous about the rights of the working- 
men will scurry to cover as soon as the real 
demands of the laboring-classes appear." ^ 
And Professor Earp adds the comment that the 
great task of the Church to-day is so to educate 
this neutral group in righteousness, peace, 
and Christian brotherhood that they wiU 
be compelled to judge impartially, what- 

2 Professor A. S. Johnson in "The Journal of Amer- 
ican Sociological Society,'* 1908, p. 15$, 



WHAT CHRISTIANS SHOULD DO lOB 

ever may be the ultimate demands of labor.^ 
To this end the accredited representatives 
of the labor movement should be everywhere 
and frequently invited to address the brother- 
hood chapters of the churches. They should 
there be encouraged to set forth frankly and 
fully the ideals and the claims of the unions. 
On such occasions they should never be "bad- 
gered" or "patronized." In many places such 
chapters may do well to hold "open forums" in 
which, from time to time, the labor problem 
shall be treated in its various aspects by com- 
petent speakers, followed by a general discus- 
sion open to any and all who desire to par- 
ticipate, — a plan already well-approved by ex- 
perience. Mutual good-will has also been pro- 
moted where church brotherhoods have invited 
particular unions, or all the union officers in 
a city, to a supper followed by an evening of 
social enjoyment. To these social courtesies, 
as well as to the invitations for public hear- 
ings, the unions have sometimes reciprocated by 
like invitations given to the church-men. 
These courtesies will, however, be fatally vi- 
tiated if they are undertaken only as' schemes to 
inveigle wage-earners into church attendance. 
Workingmen will not fail to "see through" 
such devices and will discount them accord- 
ingly. The only worthy and practical motive 

3 See "The Socialized Church," p. 86. 



104 WHAT CHRISTIANS SHOULD DO 

will be the honest purpose on the part of 
church-men to know the laboring-men, the 
labor-movement and the unions, face to face 
and heart to heart. 

The men of every church should be organized 
for systematic study and discussion of these 
matters. In many churches this can best be 
done under the auspices of the brotherhood 
chapter. Two lines of study should be care- 
fully followed. First, the social problem in 
general, including special attention to the labor 
problem. For this purpose two or three ap- 
proved text-books should be read by all, while 
a few good reference volumes, one or two social 
service periodicals, at least one high-grade 
labor journal, and the bulletins of the Social 
Service Commission of the Federated Churches, 
should be conspicuously accessible in the read- 
ing-rooms of the Church or in the head-quar- 
ters of the chapter. The method of conduct- 
ing such study-classes must depend on the con- 
ditions of each case. Often the men's class 
in the Sunday-school affords favorable op- 
portunities, and everywhere such study is prob- 
ably the most urgent matter with which these 
classes could be concerned. 

A second study of imperative importance to 
Christian men is that of the social and labor 
conditions of their own local community. 
Through the social service committee of the 



WHAT CHRISTIANS SHOULD DO 105 

local brotherhood in co-operation with the 
united brotherhoods of the city, a careful and 
comprehenisve investigation should be made of 
local conditions as to wages and hours of labor, 
Sunday work, unemployment, the labor of 
women and children, immigrant labor, work- 
accidents, and industrial diseases, (and the re- 
lation of the two latter items to local poverty 
and pauperism), housing and sanitation as 
affecting the health of the working-classes, the 
local trade unions and their demands, local 
socialistic organizations and their spirit, strong 
drink as a local factor in the labor problem, 
and not the least, the attitude of the laboring 
classes toward religion and the churches. The 
aim of all such investigations should be, not 
merely to make a "survey," but to devise ways 
and means for ci\ac betterment, to make hap- 
pier and holier the lives of all the people in 
town. It should also be remarked that village 
and rural communities have their peculiar labor 
problems to which churchmen must not be in- 
different. 

Our churches, and especially their "brother- 
hood" chapters, must see to it that they are 
uncompromisingly democratic. It is not 
enough that wage-earners are permitted to 
"join" if they care to do so. They must be 
made to care. Their capacity for leadership 
should be duly honored by their frequent elec- 



106 WHAT CHRISTIANS SHOULD DO 

tion to the offices and by careful solicitude for 
their advice and co-operation. The social 
gatherings of the church, its receptions and 
banquets, should never be marked by such an 
excess of expense or "dress" as will be pro- 
hibitive or uncomfortable for the working class 
of the congregation. This can surely be 
avoided without going to the other extreme of 
making them cheap and shabby, which would 
be equally displeasing to self-respecting work- 
ing-people. The heart of the matter is re- 
vealed in these words spoken by a labor leader 
to a company of Christian men: "The danger 
in the conflict is the bitterness of the class- 
feeling. Nothing will add so much to this bit- 
terness as class churches." 

Not only should the workingmen be active 
in the churches. Christian men should join 
the labor-unions whenever eligible. As a rule 
it is not the critical outsider but the co-opera- 
tive insider who helps any organization to 
come to its highest usefulness. One cannot 
praise too highly the testimony of Bishop Mc- 
Intyre of the Methodist Church that he glories 
in his membership in the union and his advice 
to the ministers to join some union whenever 
they can. Let laymen do likewise. 

Besides assuming the attitude of courtesy 
and good-will and seeking close acquaintance 
with the labor problem and laboring men, there 



WHAT CHRISTIANS SHOULD DO 107 

remain many specific tasks which Christian men 
may take up in behalf of labor and in the name 
of Christ. Brotherhoods, like ministerial as- 
sociations, may procure exchange of fraternal 
delegates with the unions. Brotherhood con- 
ventions may provide for a "labor-fellowship 
meeting" to be addressed by such men as John 
Mitchell or John B. Lennon. Church-men in 
the unions should encourage those organiza- 
tions to appoint chaplains, as some unions 
have already done. Not only should unions 
in their campaigns for Sunday-rest find every- 
where a fighting alliance with all church-men, 
but church-men in this behalf ought more often 
to open the campaign. When well approved 
social legislation is before legislative commit- 
tees the representatives of the unions ought to 
be able to rely implicitly on finding by their side 
at every hearing the representatives of the 
churches. In every demand for social justice, 
whether made before public authorities, at the 
office of corporations or the bar of public opin- 
ion, wage-earners should be able to count on 
the unanimous and active support of church- 
men. Of course this involves "lobbying" and 
the like, and to any of us who are too dainty 
for such things, I would recommend the words 
of Walter Rauschenbusch: "There are prob- 
ably few denominations which would hesitate 
a moment to fling their full force on a legisla- 



108 WHAT CHRISTIANS SHOULD DO 

ture if the tenure of their property or the free- 
dom of their church was threatened. If it is 
right to lobby in their own behalf, it cannot 
well be wrong to lobby in behalf of the 
people." In most places a great opportunity 
is afforded by Labor Sunday preceding Labor 
Day in September. The pastor of the church 
will usually, on such occasions, welcome the 
co-operation of the brotherhood-chapter, not 
only because such co-operation re-enforces him 
in inviting the church attendance of working- 
men, but because it re-enforces his attitude and 
utterances as their friend. 

All this does not mean that the Church or 
church-men are to sanction every demand of 
every labor union, or in any other way to be 
partial or partisan. But it does mean that 
church-men are to stand for social justice 
everywhere, all the time and at any cost. It 
means that every demand of labor, whether wise 
or unwise, shall be heard with friendliness and 
judged without prejudice. It means that the 
Church shall stand, not merely for the charity 
that alleviates the symptoms, but for the jus- 
tice that removes the causes, of our social ills. 
It means finally that Christianity can, and 
Christian men must, impart to the social order 
the only ideals and motives which can direct 
toward perfection the progress of mankind. 

4 "Christianity and the Social Crisis," p. 372-3T3. 



^ 



SEP 10 1912 



